Dr. Meir Stampfer, of the Harvard School of Public Health, once said “It’s a bitter truth to
swallow: About every fourth person on Earth is too fat. Obesity is fast becoming one of the
world’s leading reasons why people die.” Most people would agree with this statement. Today,
almost everybody needs a reason for why they are sick or have a medical problem. So, the
easiest thing to blame it on is a physical attribute that people have deemed unhealthy. In our
society, excess weight often takes the fall for problems that it may not be responsible for.
Jeffrey P. Koplan and William H. Dietz, the authors of “Caloric Imbalance and Public
Health Policy,” are two advocates of the story that obesity is an epidemic that leads to disease
and death. In their article, they point out several statistics that state that society is getting fatter
and that overweight people are more prone to certain ailments. Koplan and Dietz then use these
statistics to push their campaign for a national comprehensive obesity prevention program that
incorporates educational, behavioral, and environmental components.
In Koplan and Dietz’s article, they state that more than 50% of US adults are now
overweight, based on a body mass index (BMI) of 25 kg/m² or more. A BMI of 30 or more
makes you "obese"; at 5-foot-7 and 201 pounds, Tom Cruise's magic number is 31. The love-
handle police, Koplan and Dietz, insist on this ridiculous BMI standard.
According to Koplan and Dietz, approximately 60% of overweight 5- to 10-year-old
children already has one associated biochemical or a clinical cardiovascular risk factor. And it
gets worse as you age; Almost 80% of obese adults have diabetes, high blood cholesterol levels,
high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, gallbladder disease, or osteoarthritis and almost
40% have two or more of these ailments. These figures are seriously flawed from the start. First,
they are basing overweight off of the BMI. Secondly, many of the listed ailments can be present
because of other reasons, such as genetics, aging, stress, and resistance to insulin.
Koplan and Dietz then bring the national health care budget to the table to help their case.
They say a recent estimate suggests that the direct and indirect costs of obesity in the United
States approximated 10% of the national health care budget underscores why the nation can no
longer afford to ignore obesity as an epidemic. Ten percent of the budget! What? If someone
had 10% of a dollar, they would have ten cents. That isn’t very much. And how much of that
10% is used to directly treat obesity? Think about it. We don’t hear many people asking the
doctor, “Is there a medication to get rid of all this fat?” Most people go to the doctor to cure an
ailment. Obesity isn’t an ailment. We go to the doctor to treat the ailments that Koplan and
Dietz associate with obesity. So, less than 10% of the national health care budget is actually used
to treat obesity. These are the figures they use to prove our so-called obesity epidemic; however,
it is more like an epidemic of bad statistics.
Instead of just redoing surveys to correct their stats, Koplan and Dietz decided to promote
a so called national preventive program. The first suggestion in this program is to make changes
in the community environment to promote physical activity, such as improving the location and
appearance of stairwells, and putting work-sites, schools, and shopping areas in close proximity
to residential areas. The problem with improving the location and appearance of stairwells is that
most people would only use them if there was no elevator in the building; however, places like
malls have already improved the location and appearance of stairwells. They put electric
stairwells, or escalators, right in the middle of their infrastructure and people are using them;
Nevertheless, we are still obese. As for putting schools, work-sites, and etc. closer to residential
areas, that would just cost more money and we wouldn’t want to indirectly spend more money on
the obesity epidemic. Their second suggestion is to replace the short automobile trips, like to and
from the store, with walking or bicycling. Houston, we have a problem. When most people go
shopping, such as grocery shopping, they tend to buy things. Lets say someone walks to the
grocery store, buys some groceries, such as milk and cereal, walks back home during the middle
of the summer. There is a chance that the milk might go bad. Unless, we live right next door to
the grocery store; however, we already ruled out changing a community’s infrastructure because
it would indirectly spend more money on the obesity epidemic. Their last suggestion is to create
more community recreation areas, such as parks, playgrounds, and outdoor swimming pools.
Most towns and cities already have community recreation areas. All these suggestions in Koplan
and Dietz’s national preventive program are just excuses on why people are obese.
Basic logic dictates that obesity is no more an epidemic than couch potato-itis, that
redesigning communities won’t make us thinner, and Tom Cruise isn’t fat. But obesity scares
and Koplan and Dietz have tipped the scale against common sense because they use obesity as an
excuse. People need to look past this excuse and research the real problems that are ailing
America, or better yet that some things are just inevitable. Some people are just destined to get
certain ailments. It doesn’t have anything to do with obesity.

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