More and more Americans are now obese and significantly over weight than ever before, according to a study recently released by the Journal of the American Medical Association reports. Incredibly, as much as forty percent of women and 35 percent of men in the United States are now overweight.
This alarming growth of our overweight population is truly alarming and even worse “it’s continuing to go up despite government calls to action on weight loss and healthy eating,” said Dana Hunnes, a UCLA Medical Center dietitian who specializes in obesity.
But as women pack on the pounds, the male obesity rate is the same as it was roughly a decade ago, according to the study, which reviewed health data from 5,400 adults between 2005-2014.
And when it comes to popular culture advertisement, of the over 500 commercials by Billboard Top 100 artists, 71 percent of beverages and 81 percent of foods targeted at teens are “poorly nutritious,” researchers pointed out.
Incredibly just a single ad with South Korean pop star Psy’s endorsement for Wonderful Pistachios qualified as a “natural whole-food product,” according to lead author Marie Bragg, a New York University food-policy researcher.
These studies don’t directly blame the country’s most beautiful stars for making American women fat, but authors say the ads clearly illustrate the every day unhealthy foods we Americans are educated and marketed to eat. This clearly will impact ones eating habits in the real world.
That’s why celebrities should leverage their influence to promote more healthful messages, some obesity researchers reason.
Until the early 1980s, only about 16 percent of American adults were obese. Today, roughly 38 percent of all adults are obese.
Scientists were baffled as to exactly why — despite hundreds of millions of dollars poured into health education and outreach in recent years — American women just continue getting fatter, according to the medical journal.
“I don’t know if anyone truly knows for sure,” Hunnes said of why the obesity epidemic is worsening.
