Obesity: Epidemic or Evolution

According to The U.S. Surgeon General…

• 61% of adults in the United States were overweight or obese (BMI > 25)* in 1999.
• 13% of children aged 6 to 11 years and 14% of adolescents aged 12 to 19 years were overweight* in 1999. This prevalence has nearly tripled for adolescents in the past 2 decades.
• The increases in overweight and obesity cut across all ages, racial and ethnic groups, and both genders.
• 300,000 deaths each year in the United States are associated with obesity.
• Overweight and obesity are associated with heart disease, certain types of cancer, type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, breathing problems, and psychological disorders, such as depression.
• The economic cost of obesity in the United States was about $117 billion in 2000.

It’s been reported that…

• Obesity leads to shorter life expectancy. (It’s predicted that today’s younger generation of obese children will live shorter lives than their parents.)
• Children of obese parents are more likely to become obese than children with parents who aren’t obese.

And the World Health Organization was quoted as saying…

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight – at least 300 million of them clinically obese – and is a major contributor to the global burden of chronic disease and disability.

Originally, the word epidemic referred to a disease “affecting many persons at the same time, and spreading from person to person in a locality where the disease is not permanently prevalent (dictionary.com).”

Over time, “epidemic” morphed to become an adjective to describe any widespread malady. No one can argue that obesity is widespread (pardon the pun) and the statistics certainly are grim…

Or are they?

In a Star Trek – The Next Generation episode titled “Justice“, the crew of The Enterprise visit a planet called Rubicun III. The inhabitants, known as The Edo, lead a simple and pleasurable life. When they want to go somewhere, they don’t hop in a shuttle, jump into a powered vehicle of any kind or even press a transporter button. No, instead…they run to where they want to go.

What does this have to do with the obesity “epidemic” sweeping across our industrialized nations?

Well…

I got to thinking one day. What if we’re looking at this all wrong. What if, instead of looking at obesity and being overweight as an epidemic – of something that needs to be fixed or corrected, we looked at it as a step in our evolutionary process?

In all but a very small percentage of cases, being obese or overweight is a choice.

• You choose what you eat.
• You choose to exercise…or not.
• You choose to teach your children how to eat healthy…or not.
• You choose to learn more about your body and how it works…or not.

Up until now, all the talk about this so-called epidemic has been about how to control it or fix it. That would require controlling the actions and beliefs of millions of people.

If you talk to any married couple, they’ll tell you how difficult it is to control the actions and beliefs of just one person, never mind millions.

What would happen if we simply left people alone to live their lives the way they choose? Forget the economic costs of obesity and being overweight – as socially crippling as they are – for the moment.

If the number of obese individuals continues to rise, as it seems they will – and the life expectancy of overweight and obese individuals continues to decline, what will the world be like two hundred, five hundred or even a thousand years from now?

Could obesity hit a tipping point where the number of obese individuals declines until they become the minority – outnumbered by those who choose to live a healthy, fit lifestyle?

Will the day come when people who value healthy living be in the majority, like the Edo of Rubicun III?

Could this epidemic of obesity really be the next step in the evolution of humanity?

What do you think?