© Mark Dubowski for Duke HealthThis graph shows the prevalence of childhood obesity, 1999-2014.
"Despite some other recent reports, we found no indication of a decline in obesity prevalence in the United States in any group of children aged 2 through 19," said lead author Asheley Skinner, Ph.D., associate professor at Duke. "This is particularly true with severe obesity, which remains high, especially among adolescents."
Skinner, along with colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University, analyzed data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey, a large, ongoing compilation of health information that has spanned decades.
Reporting online April 26 in the journal Obesity, the researchers found that for 2013-2014, 33.4 percent of children between the ages of 2 through 19 were overweight. Among those, 17.4 percent had obesity, which includes a range from the lower end of the designation criteria to the higher end.
These rates were not statistically different than those from the previous reporting period of 2011-2012. Across all categories of obesity, a clear, statistically significant increase continued from 1999 through 2014.
"Most disheartening is the increase in severe obesity," Skinner said.
The prevalence of severe obesity - correlated to an adult body mass index of 35 or higher - accounted for the sharpest rise from the previous reporting period. Among all overweight youngsters in the 2012-14 reporting period, 6.3 percent had a BMI of at least 35, which was defined as class II obesity. Another 2.4 percent of those had severe obesity, defined as class III, which was consistent with an adult BMI of 40 or more.
For the previous reporting period, 5.9 percent of youngsters had class II obesity, and 2.1 percent of those were at class III levels.
"An estimated 4.5 million children and adolescents have severe obesity and they will require new and intensive efforts to steer them toward a healthier course," Skinner said. "Studies have repeatedly shown that obesity in childhood is associated with worse health and shortened lifespans as adults."
Sarah Armstrong, M.D., a pediatrician and director of the Duke Healthy Lifestyles Program who was not involved in the study, said the population-wide findings in the study are consistent with what she sees in her clinical practice. While families are more attuned to the health effects of obesity, she said, reversing the problem is as difficult one-on-one as it is nationally.
"Certainly progress has been made in addressing the issue in our country," Armstrong said. "But this study highlights that we may need to be more disruptive in our thinking about how we change the environment around children if we really want to see that statistic move on a national scale."
Skinner said the study has limitations, relying on two-year data that provides a snapshot in time across a wide population. But she said the NHANES database is a broader source than those used in studies that found declines in obesity rates among smaller or segmented populations.
"We don't want the findings to cause people to become frustrated and disheartened," Skinner said. "This is really a population health problem that will require changes across the board -- food policy, access to health care, school curriculums that include physical education, community and local resources in parks and sidewalks. A lot of things put together can work."
Overweight people are fucking abhorrent, which seems like an obvious and uncontroversial statement, but you cannot turn your head these days without gawking at the vile cascades of shapeless distended flesh that ubiquitously engulf your grotesque countrymen.
Look at these nauseating statistics:
33 percent of Americans are overweight, according to the federal government.
Another 34 percent are obese, which is even worse.
Six percent are “extremely obese,” which is code for “must be airlifted by helicopter to leave their goddamned trailers.”
Nearly a fifth of American children are overweight, three times more than in 1994 when the Internet replaced playing outside, and by “outside” I mean “Super Nintendo Entertainment System.”
The horrendous bovine masses cost the rest of us $147 billion per year, twice as much as a decade ago, which is more than enough to cover a universal health care system for people who do not plan on dying from a heart attack by the time they reach the ripe old age of thirty-six. These repulsive fat fucks require 41 percent higher medical costs on average, which screws everybody who does not get horny at the thought of KFC’s unholy Double Down sandwich. (No bread! Just fried chicken, cheese and bacon! As fatty as three Big Macs! This is exactly why George Washington and Thomas Jefferson risked their fucking lives to give Americans freedom!)
We are squandering the precious remnants of our broken economy to keep these worthless sacks of shit alive; it’s not as if they cover their disproportionate share of the tab, which would require actually getting off their colossal asses. Public health experts have proposed taxes on soda and unhealthy food to curb this epidemic, but their “solutions” are a load of ineffective, half-assed bullshit. Zoning restrictions on fast food “restaurants” and mandatory nutrition labeling have likewise failed; you cannot save people from themselves, especially when they have zero respect for their physical appearance and estimated lifespan.
We are Rome in decadent, self-indulgent decline. The corpulent hordes are never going to willingly sacrifice their extravagant caloric intake—even if it costs a few cents more—which leaves a solitary, mildly objectionable option:
We need to kill the fatties. We need to kill the fatties as soon as humanly possible.
Abandon your sentimental, weak-willed “conscience” and listen to reason; it is imperative—nay, moral—that we purge citizens who refuse to binge and purge. There must be no gutlessness when it comes to eradicating the guts amongst our numbers, no cowardice when it comes to culling our cellulite-ridden comrades. No middle ground exists in this War to the Death; it’s either them or us, the Überskinnies or the Högfuchs. Are you on the side of Good Angelic Temperance or Evil Rotund Scum?
You might bristle at the logistics of implementing a modern holocaust of the flabby-bellied untermensch, especially coming from a Jew like myself. Admittedly it raises many questions: can we construct ovens large enough to enclose the average Midwestern family? Would pollution from the smokestacks contribute to global warming more or less than the red meat-heavy diets of these incurable beasts with human faces? And if obesity is genetic, wouldn’t this glorious and economical scheme to slaughter the hedonistic chunky swine amount to genocide?
Answer: pretty much, yeah, which is why we should take a cue from our genocidal forefathers and force the overweight onto reservations where no decent person has to look at them anymore.
“Marty,” you say, “why do we need to kill the fatties when we can simply work them down to a respectable size in the ‘condensation camps’? Isn't slave labor a fantastic workout, especially when you are not fed for weeks at a time?” WELL, FRIEND, JUSTICE MEANS PURE FUCKING JUSTICE, AND THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS.
“Marty,” you say, “won't the fatties eat themselves to death anyway?” OF COURSE, BUT NOT SOON ENOUGH FOR MY “TASTE.”
“Marty,” you say, “what about the fatties who righteously despise themselves and try to lose weight but cannot regardless of their efforts, or who lack access to a gym? They deserve mercy, yes?” TRUE CONFESSION: AFTER COLLEGE I PUT ON 40 POUNDS FROM DRINKING TOO MUCH BEER. YOU KNOW HOW I LOST IT ALL? A PULL-UP BAR, RUNNING SHOES AND SELF-CONTROL; IT'S NOT FUCKING DIFFICULT. NO GODDAMNED MERCY!!!!!!!
Another excellent question is: how much excess poundage qualifies a whale for extermination?
This is tricky because the Body Mass Index, a formula created 180 years ago that divides weight by height, is a flawed and obsolete indicator of health despite its continued widespread use, as it fails to differentiate between weight from fat and weight from muscle. We need a more precise technique to separate the wheat of society from the chaff of obesity. (According to Wikipedia, chaff is “a waste material ploughed into the soil or burnt,” and I could not agree more.) Here is an example of such a progressive method: throw the fatties into the fucking ocean; if they float, shoot them immediately. If they don’t float, who gives a shit?
Naturally you might be thinking and/or screaming: “This is elitism! This is classism! This would disproportionately harm the poor, you snide judgmental out-of-touch city-slicker bastard!”
While it’s true that underprivileged citizens have higher rates of obesity than the prosperous, which is basically the definition of irony, it’s not necessarily because they are underprivileged. An Extra Value Meal costs approximately $6.00 and contains as many as 1,550 calories. Let’s try an experiment called Going to the Fucking Grocery Store!
My grocery store had chicken on sale for $2.50 per pound; one-third of a pound is a decent serving size, so that’s $.83 for the meat course. A bag of spinach was $2.50 and contained two servings, so that’s $1.25 for an antioxidant-loaded vegetable. A box of vitamin-enriched rice was $1.15 and had three servings, so that’s $.38. Holy shit, I just created a healthy meal, totaling fewer than 300 calories—which takes twenty minutes to cook, by the way, not exactly a massive burden—for less than $2.50, NOT EVEN HALF THE PRICE OF A FECAL VALUE MEAL. You cannot blame the poor for their poverty—due to the recession everyone is poor, including billionaires—but there is no excuse for laziness and therefore obesity.
A final consideration is that, after we commence our Final Solution to the Piggy Problem, we will have millions of bloated carcasses lying around, stinking up the place and blocking public transportation (as if the piggies were not guilty of this before we filled the streets with their sodium-clogged, high-fructose blood syrup). Look on the bright side: as soon as scientists figure out how to refine these corpses into oil, we will have a new source of alternative energy that will not deprive the planet of its limited resources. Everybody wins! Except the Högfuchs! Because they were fucking executed!
Jesus Christ, I hate fat people.