America's Obesity Crisis:Activists: The Obesity Warriors

• Share

(2 of 6)

Working in their individual fields--nutrition, psychology, pediatrics--each of these scientists has concluded that it is simply too difficult for Americans to stand up to the many forces that propel them to eat too much and move too little. For decades, they say, the country has seen obesity as a personal problem to be solved by each overweight individual waging a lonely war to trim pounds on the diet du jour. While it's true that we are each responsible for what we put in our own mouth, they note that the personal-responsibility approach has been a big, fat flop. In the past 30 years, the percentage of Americans who are overweight has ballooned from 48% to 65%. The percentage of children who are overweight has tripled, from 5% to 15%, and another 15% are considered borderline.

While biology and personal habits play an undeniable role, there's abundant evidence that environmental factors loom large in the obesity rate. Brownell likes to point to studies of immigrants from low-obesity countries such as India, Somalia and Japan. "When people move to countries where there is more obesity, they tend to gain weight," he notes. "Did they suddenly become less responsible when they moved?" More likely, they are responding to their new environment's cues to eat more calories and be less active. After years of trying to help obese patients lose weight in the land of the fat, says Brownell, "it became clear to me that there was this disastrous environment that almost guaranteed an obese population and something had to be done about it. That's when science became advocacy."

Call them the obesity warriors. Restaurant-and food-industry lobbyists have called them "nutrition nannies" and the "food police." But Brownell, Nestle, Ludwig, Sallis and a few other scientists have stepped out of the ivory tower of academe to challenge communities, industry and government to do more to fight obesity and especially to prevent it from afflicting more children. Taking cues from the battle against smoking, these scientists write books, they lecture at meetings--including food-industry gatherings--they dash off op-ed pieces and they spend generous amounts of time talking with reporters from major networks, newspapers and magazines like this one. What Brownell, author of Food Fight (Contemporary Books; 356 pages), and like-minded researchers advocate is change at every level of society--from local communities and schools to the Federal Government.

They are fully aware of how difficult it will be to engineer this kind of change. Nestle, who served in the Reagan Administration as senior nutritional-policy adviser and editor of the first--and only--Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, knows that health messages are politically dicey when they concern the mighty food industry. Her 2002 book, Food Politics (University of California Press; 469 pages), documents how those messages get distorted. Still, that doesn't stop her and her fellow warriors from campaigning for action.

A look at their ideas for cleaning up our fattening environment:

START WITH THE SCHOOLS