Quotes & Sayings About Obesity Epidemic

Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant ... — Gary Taubes

There is an obesity epidemic. One out of every three Americans ... weighs as much as the other two. — Richard Jeni

The obesity epidemic among American children is becoming so bad that I think there's a growing realization across the country that we've got to change what we're feeding our kids and that school may be a really good place to start. — Eric Schlosser

If we are serious about combating the childhood obesity epidemic and improving child nutrition, then everyone must chip in
parents, schools, and yes even Congress. — Tom Harkin

But if sedentary behavior makes us fat and physical activity prevents it, shouldn't the "exercise explosion" and the "new fitness revolution" have launched and epidemic of leanness rather than coinciding with an epidemic of obesity? — Gary Taubes

Obesity now contributes to the death of more than 360,000 Americans a year. The incidence of childhood obesity is now at epidemic levels. Alarm bells are going off all over the place. But our government has done virtually nothing. — Tom Harkin

In the nineteen-eighties, rates of obesity started to rise sharply in the U.S. and around the world. By the nineteen-nineties, obesity reached epidemic proportions. — John Seabrook

Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest. — Michael Pollan

When I was ten years old I was actually given McDonald's gift certificates for Christmas by my mom. Yes, my own mother. I guess she couldn't find gift certificates for a vending machine. I like to think it was her way of saying, "Merry Christmas. Here are some coupons for poison." McDonald's introduced the gift certificate prior to the obesity epidemic. I'm not saying that McDonald's gift certificates caused the obesity epidemic, but in retrospect, the timing is kind of suspicious. — Jim Gaffigan

The people in power have created an obesity epidemic. — Robert Atkins

It has always been the role of government to help solve problems, including and especially health crises. Obesity is a health epidemic across our country, and we have a responsibility as a government and a society to do all we can to promote good nutrition and healthy eating so we can reverse this alarming trend. — Richard J. Codey

We are spending millions, if not billions of dollars every year on programs to fight the childhood obesity epidemic while giving almost $2 billion of taxpayer money to the junk food and fast food industries to make the epidemic worse. — Dennis Kucinich

Cookies don't make us fat. They're not to blame for our obesity epidemic. You know what else isn't to blame? Fast food, chips, candy, technology, soda, or anything else. The choices we make over a prolonged period time determine the width of our backsides and size of our pants. No one food, company, or activity is responsible for our obesity epidemic. — Shawn Weeks

To amplify our efforts, USDA is joining with First Lady Michelle Obama in aggressively promoting the 'Let's Move' campaign, which will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. — Tom Vilsack

If the childhood obesity epidemic remains unchecked, it will condemn many of our kids to shorter lives, as well as the emotional and financial burdens of poor health. — Richard Carmona

I want to be the poster child for taking care of yourself after 40. Obesity is an epidemic in this country and I'm a living, breathing example of what it means to stay healthy. — Bernard Hopkins

Fixing obesity is going to require a change in our modern relationship with food. I'm hopeful that we begin to see a turnaround in this childhood obesity epidemic. — S. Jay Olshansky

Epidemic obesity is unquestionably a health crisis in the United States, and for that matter, in much of the world. But it is a crisis in slow motion, one that has crept up on us over years, and even decades. — David L. Katz

I couldn't open up a magazine, you couldn't read a newspaper, you couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about the obesity epidemic in America. — Morgan Spurlock

The rise in obesity is the predictable result of the rise in manufactured deliciousness. Everything we add to food just makes us want it more. And no matter how hard we try, we can't make our outsized desires go away. If anything, we're lucky, inexplicably so, that only 8.3 percent of women and 4.4 percent of men have a BMI consistent with total food addiction. But remember the children...The percentage of slender Americans will gradually work its way down to zero. (82) — Mark Schatzker

Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research and University of Chicago persuasively argue that one of the biggest reasons for the nation's current obesity epidemic is that food is now so much cheaper and easier to prepare. — Charles Duhigg

More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight - and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. Childhood obesity is already epidemic in some areas and on the rise in others. Worldwide, an estimated 17.6 million children under five are said to be overweight. — Morgan Spurlock

For the first time, the nation will have goals, benchmarks, and measureable outcomes that will help us tackle the childhood obesity epidemic one child, one family, and one community at a time, — Michelle Obama

The infant mortality rates are insanely high. The obesity epidemic is on the rise. It is all related. — Kimberly Williams-Paisley

Parents are told to turn off the TV and restrict video game time, but we hear little about what the kids should do physically during their non-electronic time. The usual suggestion is organized sports. But consider this: The obesity epidemic coincides with the greatest increase in organized children's sports in history. — Richard Louv

Larry broke my morose train of thought with his laughter. "Welcome to America," he said, "where even our zombie epidemic has an obesity epidemic. — Ian McClellan

the rise in the incidence in obesity matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in a generation of obesity, suggesting Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) may be linked to this epidemic" (Perrine, 2010). — Peter Greenlaw

The point to keep in mind is that you don't lose fat because you cut calories; you lose fat because you cut out the foods that make you fat-the carbohydrates. — Gary Taubes

The facts are in, the science is beyond question. Sugar in all its forms is the root cause of our obesity epidemic and most of the chronic disease sucking the life out of our citizens and our economy - and, increasingly, the rest of the world. You name it, it's caused by sugar: heart disease, cancer, dementia, type 2 diabetes, depression, and even acne, infertility and impotence. — Mark Hyman, M.D.

Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can't major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed. The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and enormous amounts of grains was probably more a product of lobbying by Big Food than real science; its chief impact has been to aggravate our obesity epidemic. There's plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition. It won't be easy, but it's not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could yield secrets. — Peter Thiel

Most people agree, whether or not they think that carbohydrates are inherently fattening, that by focusing on fat, the nutritional establishment gave people license to over-consume carbohydrates and that this contributed to the obesity epidemic. The new threat is that by focusing now on fructose, the AHA and USDA and other organizations are giving implicit license to over-consume starch - almost guaranteed since these agencies are still down on fat and protein. — Richard David Feinman

The problem with the standard American diet, a primary cause of our current obesity epidemic, is the fact that the majority of foods consumed are high in calories and low in micronutrients. — Joel Fuhrman

People love information. Right now in our society, we have an obesity epidemic. Because for the first time in history, we have access to food whenever we want, we don't know how to control ourselves. I think we have the exact same problem with information. — Marco Arment

Our cultural discussion of fat bodies and how we clothe them has nothing to do with health concerns, the obesity epidemic, or the comfort of fat people. It has everything to do with what we expect from women, what we've been told by the fashion industry, and the value we place on 'perfect' bodies. — Jennifer Armintrout