March 17, 2005
Obesity May Shrink U.S. Lifespan
By RACHEL ZIMMERMAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

For two centuries, life expectancy in the U.S. has increased steadily,
thanks to clean water, improved nutrition, better sanitation and
medical breakthroughs such as antibiotics and vaccines.

But a new study finds that an explosion in obesity -- mainly in
children and adolescents -- is threatening to slash two to five years
from the average American lifespan. That would mean that the
life-expectancy gains could be reversed for the first time since the
early 1800s -- and that today's children may well live shorter,
less-healthy lives than did their parents.

The results -- published in today's New England Journal of Medicine --
underscore the growing need for public-policy efforts to curb obesity
in younger Americans, the study authors say. For example, one piece of
federal legislation proposed yesterday by Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa
Democrat, would restrict junk-food advertising aimed at children.

"This is like a tsunami," says study co-author David Ludwig, of Harvard
University and Children's Hospital Boston. "You don't want to wait
until the wave reaches the shoreline to act."

The current average U.S. lifespan is 77.6 years, up from 47.3 years in
1900. Scientists and policy makers long have assumed it would continue
rising. The United Nations has projected a life expectancy of 100 years
in most developed countries by 2300. The U.S. Social Security
Administration, among the more conservative of the estimators, predicts
it will reach the mid-80s in this century.

But the fresh analysis, conducted by some of the nation's top academic
experts in life expectancy, suggests that these reports haven't taken
into account the negative effects of obesity on lifespan, which will
likely occur during the next 10 to 50 years.

Obesity is defined as a body-mass index of more than 30. (BMI is
calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in meters
squared.) It currently knocks at least four to nine months off the
average U.S. lifespan, according to researchers led by S. Jay
Olshansky, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and others at
Harvard and the International Longevity Center of New York.

If childhood obesity continues to increase, obesity could end up
slashing a total of two to five years from the average lifespan, the
researchers found. Today, about nine million children over the age of
six are obese, according to a 2004 Institute of Medicine report. That
is double the number of preschool children and triple the number of
six-to-11-year-olds who were obese in the 1970s.

Obesity raises the risk of heart disease and cancer. Another problem is
type 2 diabetes, which drastically increases the risk of early death.
The surge in childhood obesity has triggered a tenfold rise in the past
decade of type 2 diabetes in children.

The diagnosis of diabetes last year at age 12 was a wake-up call for
Somerville, Mass., teenager Ariel Baugh. Four feet five inches tall,
Ariel weighed in at 156 pounds at the time of her diagnosis, says her
sister and legal guardian Marcie Baugh, thanks in part to a diet of
"Big Macs and Happy Meals with ice cream." Now, with a healthier diet,
regular exercise and attendance at a weight-loss program at Children's
Hospital, Ariel has lost about 30 pounds, but sometimes still cheats on
her eating plan, Ms. Baugh says, adding, "It's so hard when you're a
teenager and everybody else is eating the junk food."

The effect of obesity on lifespan could be so great, the researchers
say, that even significant medical advances -- such as curing one major
disease -- won't prevent life-expectancy gains from stalling or even
dropping, the study finds. Minorities and the poor, with less access to
health care and with higher rates of obesity, are expected to be
hardest hit.

Such a trend could be a money-saver for the nation's Social Security
system, the researchers say. But the costs to the health-care system,
as well as the price paid by obese Americans themselves, justify a
major national effort to get youngsters to slim down, the researchers
say.

An accompanying editorial by a University of Pennsylvania researcher
suggests that elements of the study are "excessively gloomy," given
likely new medical advances and successful public-health campaigns for
such longevity-increasing measures as safer sex, better eating habits
and quitting smoking.

And the Center for Consumer Freedom, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit
group funded by the restaurant and food industries, called the study
"terrible," and said the dire warnings aren't supported by the data.

Obesity experts heralded the findings, which they believe may finally
help the public understand the high price that society is paying for
obesity. "The results are striking in that they put the high levels of
obesity in terms that people can understand," says Kelly Brownell,
director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale
University.

Environmental factors and a "super-size-me" attitude are largely to
blame for the obesity explosion, experts say. Inexpensive fast food and
soft drinks are ubiquitous; portion sizes have ballooned; schools sell
junk food in the cafeteria while cutting physical education programs.
At the same time, children are becoming less active, watching more
television and spending more time online.

Parents need to establish eating habits early, and watch portion size
from age two on, says Allan Walker, a doctor who heads the division of
nutrition of Harvard Medical School. He also recommends healthier
snacks, and making meals a social time for family bonding.

Even intrauterine nutrition can significantly influence body size in
children, and may predispose children to developing obesity, says Emily
Oken, an instructor at Harvard Medical School. She says a growing area
of research suggests a link between birthweight and body size in
childhood and later in life.