By Leaps and Bounds

Today marks a special milestone in the illustrious history of our great nation: the US Census Bureau estimates that today at 7:46am EST, the number of individuals residing in the United States will reach 300 million. Hurray! [Editor's Note: I was careful not to say "the number of Americans will reach 300 million" because of the (largely compelling) objections of those who have pointed out that our population does not yet include 300 million Americans, a term they contend should refer to American citizens. Current calculations place the number of illegals somewhere between 7 and 20 million, with 12 million serving as a widely accepted estimate. There is, of course, so much variance in these figures because illegals immigrants by nature tend to be rather wary of attempts to track or calculate them, especially if those attempts are made by some government bureau.]

Here are some fun numbers, gleaned from a PBS article: The population of the United States reached 100 million in 1915, and hit 200 million in 1967; it is projected to grow to 400 million by 2042. This means that the intervals between hundred millions in our population were of 52, 39, and 36 years. "Aging and immigration have pushed America's population, unlike those of every other industrialized nation, to grow. Quickly. One American is born every seven seconds, while one dies every 13 seconds; basically, people are staying healthier and living longer. Boosting those numbers is the Census Bureau's estimate that America absorbs close to 1 million immigrants a year." Although America's aging population is expected to place an increasing tax burden on the work force as it struggles to keep programs like Social Security in place, demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institute is optimistic: "Unlike Europe and unlike Japan, however, we're going to be projected to grow in our labor force population, as well as in our child population, over the next three or four decades."

(At left is a photo I took when I was at the L.A. County Fair with Ben, Pam, and Daniel. My visit was mostly for fun, but I also used the occasion as a fact-finding mission to gather photographic specimens as illustrations for this piece. Notice how this subject is clutching the TWO (2) large Coke-a-Cola cups!)

But aside from the quantitative increase in our population, many Americans are experiencing a concurrent growth trend, viz. that of our expanding girth. Before embarking on my informative little presentation of some facts and figures, let's take a moment to define the terms "obesity" and "overweight." Doctors use a simple calculation known as body mass index (BMI) to determine whether someone is overweight. The scientific nature of the computation has rendered the equation in metrics (body weight in kilograms/body height in meters); for metrically-challenged users of the English system, ObesityinAmerica.org has this online BMI calculator.

An individual with a BMI of less than 18.5 is considered underweight. A normal weight BMI falls between 18.5-24.9 (FYI, I fell into this range at a respectable 21.9); an individual is "overweight" if his BMI is between 25-29.9, and a BMI ≥30 qualifies one as "obese." Additionally, those who manage the spectacular feat of reaching a BMI ≥40 procure for themselves the designation as "severely," or "morbidly," obese. (This is not where you want to end up, people. There's a reason they used the word "morbid" in the title: doctors hoped the mere sound of this final classification would discourage people from getting this fat. "Morbidly obese" is just shorthand for "so spectacularly corpulent as to put one's very life in danger, as if the fat itself were coalescing around one's throat to strangle him.")

At the risk of sounding alarmist, although obesity is not a phenomenon new to the United States, it is a condition growing at an alarming rate. [The rest of this paragraph is admittedly—and regrettably—statistic laden. For those who don't do well with numbers, you might skip to the next paragraph. I wanted to present the numbers in a succinct and eye-appealing chart, but I don't know how to import an Excel spreadsheet into the blogger html. Anyone who knows how and wants to help can leave the instructions as a comment on this post.] The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that from 1971-1974, 11.2% of women between the ages of 20-39 were obese; by 2000, this figure had more than doubled to 28.4%. Similarly, JAMA data shows that 10.2% of men of that age were obese; by 2000, the number had grown to 23.7%. The statistics for overweight individuals (provided by the CDC, from the Obesity.org website) are even more grim: between 1999 and 2000, 67% of all men (that is, men from all age groups) were overweight, as were 62% of all women; 27.7% of all men and 34% of all women qualified as obese; 3.1% of all men, and 6.3% of all women had reached the heights (or breadth) of morbidly obese. [For comparison, the 1988-1994 figures for the morbidly obese were 1.7% of men and 4% of women.]

(At right: Pam and Daniel at the L.A. County Fair. I wanted to take a photo of the rotund man in yellow behind them [for a better look, click on the photo to enlarge it]. Afraid of being too obvious in my intent, I had the lovely pair pose for this picture with the man in the background.)

To put it another way, the CDC estimates that almost two-thirds of the American population (or 196 million people) are either overweight, obese, or severely obese; if the number of morbidly obese Americans were collected and put into one state, that state would have the 12th largest population (Obesity.org).

And the future is looking considerably dire—data for children and adolescents is even worse that those for adults, and structural causes of obesity are becoming even more entrenched in modern society. Such factors include the decreasing relative cost of food, government subsidies for crops such as corn (from which we make high fructose corn syrup) and soy beans (used to make hydrogenated soybean oil), urban sprawl, (which leads to a greater dependence on automobiles for transportation), and changes in the workforce (fewer jobs which involve physical exersion, and more jobs that are entirely behind a desk or computer screen). According to the CDC, between 1971-1974, just 6.2% of adolescents (age 12-19) were obese; by 2000 that number had reached 15.5%.

(At right: a large man waiting for his table at Lucille's BBQ Restaurant in Brea. Kevin Yap, whose partial, shaggy visage appears on the left side, was the front man; as I pretended to take his picture, I zoomed in and moved the camera slightly to the right. What business does a man of this girth have eating fried, Southern style cooking, I dont know. Perhaps instead of standing around during the wait, he could have jogged a lap or two around the block.)

It looks like our population will continue to grow by leaps and bounds for some time to come. If all these new inhabitants of America hope to live healthier, ostensibly more enjoyable lives, they'd better get going on an exercise regimen, perhaps one that includes plenty of cardiovascular leaping and bounding.