The murder rate in the U.S. in 2023 was 5.7 per 100,000 people. The chance of being killed by a foreign-born terrorist is about 1 in 4.3 million. But some 40 percent of Americans in the most recent studies are so fat their weight threatens their health – and their lives. And Kansans are worse.
In the context of the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings recently of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Health and Human Services Secretary and a Kansas political arena subject to the constant crowing of Governor Laura Kelly to expand state Medicaid benefits to more people, Kansas and the country at large need to have a serious conversation about fat and what it’s costing us – not just in public and private dollars – but also in quality of life.
WHY IS AMERICAN FOOD SO UNHEALTHY- Health Day
But try as they might, public health officials and others like RFK who’ve been sounding the alarm about how fat we’ve gotten in the last 30 years – and the reasons why – haven’t found a very receptive ear among either the public, the government or the nation’s food industry. Indeed the messaging has been buried in a monsoon of commercial food marketing hawking goodies with preservatives, mass carbohydrates, government subsidized seed oils, bizarre chemical colorings and insulin-spiking high fructose corn syrup. Restaurant dining and dining locations with large portions of mass produced processed foods have mushroomed over the past three decades to recently become a $1 trillion U.S. industry. While the niche craze of healthy eating and exercise has grown among a slim, largely affluent segment of the population and led to a rise in commercial options for health food grocery retailers and fitness facility franchises like Planet Fitness in more populous urban areas, here in the blue collar dominated small towns of Kansas and the Midwest, convenience store pizza rules and the primary mode of exercise appears to be chewing.
Not only are Kansans fatter than the average American, but Sunflower State residents are expected to get even fatter as time goes on. Projections by the CDC estimate about half of all adults age 18 and older in the U.S. will become obese within the next 10 years – but us biscuit and gravy eaters in Kansas will lead the pack with 55% expected to hit the too fat mark by 2034.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE HEALTH RISKS OF PROCESSED FOODS – NPR
Climbing obesity numbers in children correlate with surging statistics for Type 2 diabetes among American kids. From 2002 to 2018 according to the Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes Research, childhood Type 2 diabetes increased 5% per year, rising from 9 per 100,000 to 17.9 per 100,000, primarily among Black, Hispanic and Asian communities.
And Kansas kids are even fatter than the average. At 31 percent tubby, they’re just edging the national average of 30 percent between 10 and 19. If you’re 50 or over, how many fat kids did you know when you were in the 4th grade? Anyone manufacturing macaroni and cheese, much less feeding it to their kids as a part of their regular diet, should be waterboarded.
Unlike the scenes of impoverished starvation depicted two centuries ago in literature like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, the poor in the U.S. now are the fattest – and rural states like Kansas with larger numbers of poorer residents see more than anecdotal proof. All studies of obesity correlate lower socioeconomic status with higher rates of obesity – it isn’t that the poor in the U.S. aren’t well fed; it’s that healthier foods are more expensive and more time consuming; cheaper, more convenient foods are abundant and by far the most unhealthy. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to eat lots of easy, bad food – and more often.
Whether or not RFK’s multiple idiosyncrasies will prevent his confirmation as HHS secretary, we can at least hope that his focus on making the American food supply more healthy will raise the topic to a new level of prominence in the national dialogue. There is a reason that America spends more on health care than any other country yet has some of the fattest, most unhealthy populations. There’s a reason the U.S. had higher percentages of Covid deaths than other countries even with the best doctors and the best medicine. In the U.S., Covid was an accomplice, not a root cause. Statistics that show higher mortality rates among the oldest, poorest, fattest populations – Blacks, Hispanics and residents of rural areas – prove it.
Hopefully the time is right for a full scale overhaul of food and America’s approach toward it. Hopefully a new dialogue in the U.S. medical community will focus on improving health instead of profit incentives in treating disease. And in Kansas, legislators should consider this broader context before tossing more public dollars toward symptoms without solving the problems that cause them.
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
