Most Californians Are Fat, Study Finds
More than half of California adults are overweight, and this unhealthy heftiness has spread to just about every segment of the state’s population in the last decade, according to a new analysis of state data.
For all the gyms and juice bars in the state--and despite national hype about beaches peopled with “Baywatch” bodies--60% of men and 45% of women are overweight or obese, the nonprofit Public Health Institute determined in survey results released Tuesday.
Although the problem is most pronounced among African Americans and Latinos, the rates have climbed substantially among whites. The trend cuts across age, income and education levels, causing researchers and health care advocates to label it a public health crisis.
“We need to sound an alarm,” said Glovioell Rowland, a Pasadena developmental psychologist and minister who is working with her church to combat the problem, especially among African Americans. “Our people are killing themselves with a fork.”
Obesity--extreme overweight--kills about 33,000 Californians a year and costs the state an estimated $6 billion annually in direct health care costs, the researchers said. Nearly 18% of state residents are considered obese.
Simply being overweight, however, raises the risk of coronary heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes, arthritis and other chronic diseases.
California’s problem isn’t unique--indeed, the state is a little trimmer than most. A national study by Tufts University researchers published last year found that 63% of men and 55% of women older than 25 are overweight. Obesity is the second leading preventable cause of death in the country, after smoking, experts say.
California theoretically has a healthier cuisine than other parts of the country--lacking, for instance, the sort of heavily fried food commonplace in the South, said Susan Foerster, chief of the cancer prevention and nutrition section of the state Department of Health Services.
But, she warned, “we’re taking our fat in different ways . . . through fast food. We’re not spending our time at the beach or hiking in the mountains; we’re chained to our computers and watching our videos. We’re doing the same kind of sedentary activity as the rest of Americans are doing. We have a culture that says, ‘Don’t just sit there, eat something!’ ”
The analysis, part of an ongoing nationwide survey, was performed by the Berkeley-based institute under contract with the state Department of Health Services. It relied on respondents to report their own heights and weights, so researchers said it may actually underestimate the problem.
In part, the findings are so dramatic because the federal definition of “overweight” became more stringent in 1998. The acceptable body mass index, based on a person’s height and weight, was reduced. For example, a person who is 5-foot-5 is considered overweight at 150 pounds. The cutoff used to be 168 pounds.
Yet the definition was changed because the new cutoffs more accurately reflect the point at which piling on the pounds becomes unhealthy, researchers said.
“Regardless of what standards we are using, [the numbers] are going up,” said Sharon Sugerman, a Public Health Institute research scientist who worked on the state analysis.
Almost every subgroup studied in California is fattening up, but some are in more jeopardy than others, researchers determined. Men are faring worse than women, perhaps because societal norms render women more conscious of their appearance and more prone to chronic dieting. Also, women tend to be more in control of household food, so they have more choices.
However, a greater proportion of women than men are obese--nearly 19% compared with 17%--a reversal that researchers could not immediately explain.
Ethnic disparities reflect a combination of cultural, economic, educational and genetic influences, scientists and health experts said.
Fruits and vegetables may be less available or attractively displayed in the markets that serve certain black and Latino communities. A family may come from a culture that traditionally relies on a high-fat diet. Or it may live in a neighborhood with more fast-food stands than farmers’ markets, more video arcades than parks.
Finally, research has suggested that some ethnicities whose origins are in regions where food was scarce evolved, biologically, to retain more fat.
Remarkably, although the researchers found people who didn’t graduate from high school tend to be fatter than the more educated population, they did not find much difference among income groups. Whether people make less than $10,000 a year or more than $50,000, the needle on the scale is moving steadily to the right.
Researchers and health advocates familiar with the survey were adamant that the traditional educational message of “eat less, exercise more” isn’t enough any more.
In response to what officials have labeled an “obesity epidemic,” the Public Health Institute, the American Cancer Society, the National Stroke Assn. and others are formally calling upon Gov. Gray Davis to develop effective public policy solutions.
According to Dr. Carmen Nevarez, vice president of the Public Health Institute, these might include rigorous requirements that schools provide physical education for every child; rules forcing fast-food restaurants to display their ingredients; and construction of more bike paths, sidewalks, parks and recreation centers in communities that lack them.
“There is a great deal of this that comes down to making the right [individual] choices,” she said. “But you have to make those ‘right choices’ available.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
An Overweight State
Following are the percentages of Californians 18 and older who are overweight:
*
To Find out if your weight is normal, find your height in the left hand column and move across the row to your weight. The number at the top of the column is your body mass index (BM). If it is 25 to 29, you are overweight, if it is 30 or above, you are obese.
*
Sources: California Department of Health Services, Cancer Surveillance Section, National Institutes of Health.
