SAN ANTONIO — One called it a perfect storm. Another said it was a train wreck. Rising obesity rates will push Texas and the nation to physical and financial disaster unless people change their behaviors, according to speakers at the recent Texas Produce Convention in San Antonio.
Leslie Biediger, a chronic disease nutrition consultant with the Texas Department of Health’s Public Health Nutrition Program, said childhood obesity rates are rising at an alarming rate and will prove to be costly.
“From 1999 to 2000, 16 percent of children in all age groups were overweight,” she said. “But in a survey in 2000 and 2001 of fourth, eighth and 11th graders, it showed we have a 32 percent overweight rate in Texas.”
Between 1990 and 2002, Biediger said, overweight and obesity rates in Texas rose from almost 43 percent to 63 percent. The condition is more common among men, minorities and middle-age adults.
With more baby boomers retiring and an increase in the state’s minority population, Texas will be hard pressed to treat the many costly medical complications triggered by obesity, including diabetes and heart disease, Biediger said.
“Right now we have a perfect storm coming together leading toward much greater spending,” she said. “There’s a huge price tag that comes with this issue. It is estimated that the government spent $10.4 billion in 2001 on obesity and overweight costs, not including lost wages. If we continue to increase obesity rates at the rate we’re increasing now, in 2040 we’re going to have about 14 million people in the state of Texas who are obese, with a price tag of about $40 billion.”
With studies showing obesity rates much lower among people who consume five servings of fruits and vegetables per day, Biediger said partnerships with schools, the produce industry and others are vital in promoting higher consumption of those foods.
Only 23 percent of Texans consume the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, but improvement is possible, Biediger said.
“Some bad habits have changed,” she said. “In 1965 over 40 percent of the population was smoking, but in 2001 only about 20 percent smokes, so social norms can be changed through education and awareness.”
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs cited Centers for Disease Control studies estimating one-third of children born in the United States in 2002 will develop Type 2 diabetes, once called adult-onset diabetes, due to obesity.
“However, among Hispanics that number is 50 percent, so we’re working with the Hispanic communities in Houston and Dallas and other areas to avert what I call a train wreck,” she said. “And CDC said that while we lost 415,000 people last year to illnesses related to tobacco, they expect to lose 500,000 Americans in 2005 to illnesses related to being overweight or obese.
“The point is,” she continued, “it’s gonna kill us, literally. Families will be in terrible shape; the costs are going to kill us, and the prediction that medical costs will be $40 billion, that’s in today’s dollars. Our state budget for a two-year period is $105 billion, so you can see that those kinds of losses and costs will kill us.”
Combs said her agency has created several programs to help public schools promote exercise and healthful foods to students and parents.
Dr. Elizabeth Pivonka, president of the Produce for Better Health Foundation, anon-profit consumer education organization, said five of the top six leading causes of death in this country are diet related.
“We spend about a thousand times more per person in this country to treat a disease than we do to prevent a disease, which is unfortunate,” she said, “because in the past 100 years we’ve gained 30 years in our life expectancy, 80 percent of which came from preventing, not treating disease.”
Eating more fruits and vegetables, increasing physical activity and decreasing junk food consumption, Pivonka said, are the major solutions for decreasing chronic disease.
In 2003 her foundation launched the 5 a Day the Color Way campaign to encourage consumers to eat five or more servings of colorful fruits and vegetables a day. Deeply hued fruits and vegetables provide a wide and healthy range of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals, she said. The colors are blue/purple, green, white, yellow/orange and red.
Dr. Leonard Pike, a Texas A&M University System professor of horticulture who has developed and released 11 varieties of onions and carrots, including the 1015 onion. His current research is to develop new varieties with natural healthful compounds, he said.
Pike is encouraged by facts released in 2003 by the World Health Organization regarding the production and consumption of fruits and vegetables.
“Up to 2.7 million lives could be saved with sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption, according to the WHO,” Pike said. “And low fruit and vegetable intake is among the top 10 selected risk factors for global mortality, and it’s blamed for 19 percent of gastrointestinal cancer, 31 percent of heart disease and 11 percent of strokes in the world.
“These statements alone by the World Health Organization should give us hope that eventually people will understand the importance of eating more fruits and vegetables, which will allow us to grow and sell more fruits and vegetables,” Pike said.
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