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It may be sad news when this is the good news: Pennsylvania’s adult obesity rate dropped in 2015 by all of two-tenths of a percent.
The reason this paltry slimming of Keystone society is good news: It was, as shown in “The State of Obesity” report released last week, the first drop of any sort in 25 years.
The reason it is sad news: In 1990, our obesity rate was less than half what it is today. An estimated 13.7 percent of us had a body mass index above 30 (considered obese) then, compared to 30 percent now.
To be sure, the BMI is an imperfect measure of healthy weight compared to height. A person can be fit and muscular and well up on the BMI scale. The report, released annually by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, acknowledges that.
But the report is a consistent way to track trends, said Dr. Anthony Petrick, Geisinger Health System’s chief of bariatric surgery. Less than half a century ago, not one state in the nation had an adult obesity rate above 15 percent, Petrick pointed out.
The trend is unmistakable. Even in Colorado, our chronically leanest state, the adult obesity rate topped 20 percent for the first time in 2011, climbing from a now-stunning rate of 6.9 percent in 1990. The report notes that, prior to 1990, no state was above the 20 percent rate. Colorado was the last to exceed that threshold.
The report also shows that, in Pennsylvania, obesity among 2- to 4-year-olds from low-income families was 12.2 percent, and has hovered near that since 2001, while obesity among high school students rose from 11.9 percent in 2009 to 14 percent in 2015.
Some good news in the report nationally, and echoed by Petrick regionally, is that access to sodas in schools has dropped substantially, along with the percentage of high school students who say they drink at least one soda a day.
The report, accessible online at stateofobesity.org, offers plenty of ways to reverse the trend. The biggest successes have been in schools, where the regulations have increased healthy options for lunches and vending machines.
Other recommendations:
• Provide more safe open spaces for exercise and outdoor activities, and more paths or walkways that encourage heading to destinations on foot.
• Increase mandates for minimum daily physical activity in schools.
• Increase menu labeling in restaurants, and public education on what to consider when confronted with such information.
• Adopt tax incentives and municipal plans that encourage placement of grocery stores in “food deserts” – areas where healthy foods are hard to find – while creating transportation options for those who are trying to get to such stores.
The real motivator, Petrick said, is not to think of looking slimmer or beating Colorado in the state rankings. It’s about health. Being obese increases risks for a plethora of costly, chronic ailments that no one wants: high blood pressure, diabetes, joint pain, heart disease and stroke, to name a few.
Put in those terms, it’s hard to figure out why we aren’t doing more to turn the tide.