Understanding Obesity in the US
Obesity has become a global pandemic. In almost every country in the world, obesity is rising and the speed of this growth is ever increasing (Roberts & Edwards, p. 20, 2010). As this health crisis continues to expand, the need to understand the underlying causes becomes more and more vital.
Roberts & Edwards (2010) claim they have found the key to understanding this crisis in their book The Energy Glut. They propose that increasing global obesity is not a result of personal gluttony, but instead, the growing global dependence on energy, most importantly fossil fuels. They also stress that this necessity has not been produced out of laziness. As populations continue to grow, urban sprawl continues to stretch further and further away from big cities. These suburban regions are not designed for walking or biking and lack sufficient public transit services, resulting in the need to drive to and from every destination. As well, as more and more people begin to drive, the streets become more and more unsafe for the remaining pedestrians and bikers, eventually driving them off the streets and into cars. A study conducted by the University of California, Berkley
Introduction:
shows evidence of this phenomenon, finding a direct correlation between the BMI’s of a group of children and the density of traffic around their homes (Roberts & Edwards, p. 43, 2010). As more people continue to drive, this problem only gets worse and the vicious cycle of increased danger to increased drivers continues. Other energy intensive activities like television viewing or video gaming are also linked to the current obesity crisis, as advertisers and corporations push for the continual sale and invention of new, lucrative, sitting-intensive technologies(Roberts & Edwards, p.27, 2010). Thus, according to Roberts & Edwards, it is the drastic decrease in daily physical activity, brought on by the motorization and electrification of transportation and entertainment, responsible for the current obesity pandemic, rather than an increase in food consumption. A study conducted in the UK supports this claim, finding that obesity rates, from the period of 1960-1995, had risen while average food energy intake had fallen (Prentice & Jebb, 1995 as cited by Roberts & Edwards, p. 27, 2010).
For my project, I wanted to search further into Roberts & Edwards' (2010) conclusions. Analysing obesity from a global scale, however, proved impossible as there is not enough data available to get a clear understanding of the situation. Due to the sheer amount of both data and obese inhabitants, I decided to shift my focus to the United States. While the US is no longer at the top of global obesity rankings (surpassed by countries in the Middle East, Latin America and Oceania), obesity continues to pose a real threat to the health of the population. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 37.5% of adults in America are obese (have a BMI of 30 or greater) and in 2008, the medical cost attributed to obesity was $147 billion. Clearly this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
The US was also an intriguing area of study due to its association with fast food. When Googling “obesity in the US”, the images that pop up tend to involve fast food or fat people eating fast food, like the comic in figure 1, or the image on the home page of this site, which illustrates the rise of obesity in terms of burgers. Nowhere amongst this Google images search would we find a picture of a car. This illustrates the widely held belief projected by the media that obesity in the US is a consequence of fast food culture rather than car culture. Thus I wanted to see how Roberts and Edwards’ theory would hold up in a country that is so incredibly infested with fast food chains.
Within the following study I ask four main questions. First, is a state’s energy usage a reflectance of its percentage of physically active adults? Second, which has a greater impact on obesity: activity or diet? Third, what are the other variables aside from activity and diet that have an impact on obesity within the US? And lastly, how can these findings help us construct more effective obesity prevention strategies? As well, this is a geographical analysis of obesity and thus I will examine the spatial distribution of obesity, and other variables, within the US in hopes of uncovering patterns that will better explain why some areas are more obese than others. While this study revolves largely around the theories presented by Roberts & Edwards (2010), the overall intent is to gain a better understanding of the causes of obesity in the US.