By Haddon Libby
Obesity now outranks hunger as a global problem. The US leads the pack with 79% of its adults overweight with 34% classified as obese. Among children in the US, 1 in 5 are overweight with 1 in 3 classified as obese.
According to the Worldwatch, 40% of men and 30% of women worldwide are overweight with 24% of men and 27% of women obese. In developed countries, nearly 75% of all people are overweight. In the US alone, obesity adds $190 billion or $575 a year per person to health care costs. Those costs, like our waistbands, are growing rapidly.
Body Mass Index (BMI) is a simple calculation used to classify people into the basic weight groups of underweight (below 18.5), normal weight (18.5 to 24.9), overweight (25.0 to 29.9) and obese (over 30). For example, a 6’ person is underweight at 136 pounds, overweight at 185 pounds and obese over 220 pounds. That means that more than 260 of America’s 330 million people need to lose weight.
If you want to see where you fit in weight-wise, there are numerous BMI calculators online. For children, it is a bit more complicated. Use http://fit.webmd.com/teen/bmi/calc-bmi for the best BMI calculator.
Kuwaitis have the highest BMI at 29.5, followed by the US at 28.8, Argentina and Mexico at 28.6 with Egypt, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates and Chile all over 28.0. On average, men in Kuwait at 31.4 are obese followed by Egypt at 30.0 and the US third at 29.0. Women in Argentina are the heaviest at 28.7 followed by the US at 28.5 and Greece at 28.0.
Among other notable countries, the Japanese have the healthiest weight levels at 22.5 with the French at 24.5 and Italians borderline overweight at 25.1.
In contrast, 15% or 50 million Americans are food insecure meaning that they sometimes miss a meal due to poverty. Among US children, 1 in 5 are food insecure while 10% of America’s elderly are food insecure. Holmes County, Mississippi has the greatest food insecurity in the US at 37% while some of the eastern cities of our very own Coachella Valley are high in the ranks of America’s food insecure.
Globally, 600 million people or 10% of the global population suffer from malnutrition and hunger with 15% or 1 billion people missing meals each day due to poverty.
The world actually creates enough calories to avoid hunger and starvation. It is estimated that it would cost only $3.2 billion to wipe out childhood starvation which leads to 2.6 million deaths each year.
Looking at this worldwide problem from a local perspective, the Coachella Valley is truly a microcosm of the problem. Due in large part to the extreme wealth and poverty in the region, we have a large number of overweight and obese neighbors as well as a disproportionate share of those who are food insecure.
As we head into the summer months where seasonal workers are unemployed and children who were in school lunch programs no longer have access to those meals, demand on the food banks is higher than ever. Please help out by donating food items to local food banks like the Find Food Bank. Protein is always in dire need as it is one of the food staples that the poor can least afford.
This is one problem that we can solve as a community without the involvement of Washington DC, Sacramento or even Riverside. Cut your calories by a mere 500 calories a day and donate that food to someone in need. You will like how you look and feel on so many levels by such a simple offering.
