Obesity: What should be known

Obesity is truly an epidemic in the United States, and growing at an alarming rate. In the early 1960s, it was estimated that roughly one in eight Americans were obese. Yet at the turn of the century, that figure grew to nearly one in every three Americans. Even more frightening, at last count, nearly two out of three Americans are overweight, and childhood obesity has tripled since 1980. With this rise in obesity, so too has obesity-related death risen. Obesity is blamed for close to 300,000 deaths in America each year, or one death every two-and-a-half minutes.