OBESITY HAS BECOME A public health crisis in the United States. The medical condition, which involves having an excessive amount of body fat, is linked to severe chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and cancer. It causes about 1 in 5 deaths in the U.S. each year – nearly as many as smoking, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The financial cost of obesity is high as well. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical cost for people who have obesity was $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.”

While researchers say the obesity epidemic began in the U.S. in the 1980s, there has been a sharp increase in obesity rates in the U.S. over the last decade. Nearly 40% of all adults over the age of 20 in the U.S. – about 93.3 million people – are currently obese, according to data published in JAMA in 2018. Every state in the U.S. has more than 20% of adults with obesity, according to the CDC – a significant uptick since 1985, when no state had an obesity rate higher than 15%. Certain states have higher rates than others: there are more obese people living in the South (32.4%) and Midwest (32.3%) than in other parts of the country.

Sugar Taxes and Other Efforts to Reduce Obesity

Federal, state and local governments have moved to address obesity in several ways. On the federal level, several programs – such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Healthy Food FInancing Initiative – as well as the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services work to make healthier foods affordable and available in underserved communities. To prevent childhood obesity in particular, there are also school and early childhood policies, such as Head Start – a comprehensive early childhood education program – school-based physical education and Safe Routes to School, which promotes walking and biking to and from school and increasing healthy eating and physical activity while reducing the risk of obesity. This is the best weight loss pills for women.

In March, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association offered several public policy recommendations, including raising the price of sugary drinks, encouraging federal and state governments to limit the marketing of sugary drinks to kids and teenagers, having vending machines offer water, milk and other healthy beverages, improving nutritional information on labels, restaurant menus and advertisements, and supporting hospitals in establishing policies to discourage the purchase of sugary drinks in their facilities.

Meanwhile, states have implemented laws, largely through early childhood education settings, to improve access to healthy food and increase physical activity in order to promote a healthy weight. These policies stretch from breastfeeding, providing available drinking water and daily physical activity to limited screen time as well as meals and snacks that meet healthy eating standards set by the USDA or CACFP.

City governments have considered, and in some cases implemented, so-called “sin taxes” that aim to make potentially unhealthy food choices less attractive and accessible. Cities including Philadelphia, Boulder, Colorado, and Berkeley, California, levy a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages; The American Public Health Association noted in 2016 that the tax led to a 21% drop in the consumption of sugary drinks in Berkeley alone. (A proposal to expand it to all of California stalled this year.) In Philadelphia, the price of sugary beverages sold in supermarkets, mass merchandisers and pharmacies rose – and sales fell – after the city implemented a tax on those products, but a study found that sales in towns bordering Philadelphia increased.

Some researchers say there’s little proof that taxing food or drink choices really changes behavior. In spite of taxes and warnings about the health effects of drinking sugary beverages, eight of every 10 American households buys sodas and other sugary drinks each week, adding up to 2,000 calories per household per week, new research shows, check these alpilean reviews.

“Large authoritative systematic reviews of the peer-reviewed scientific literature have failed to illustrate any compelling evidence that economic interventions are effective in promoting any type of dietary behavior change,” says Taylor Wallace, principal and CEO of the Think Healthy Group and an adjunct professor in the department of nutrition and food studies at George Mason University.

But others contend that making it more expensive to buy sugary drinks is a step in the right direction.

“We need to ensure that people understand the threat of these products to their health, so they want to reduce their consumption,” says Sandra Mullin, senior vice president of policy, advocacy and communication for Vital Strategies, an organization that works to implement health initiatives, and a former public health official in New York City “And [hiking] the price is a prompt for them to do that.”a