Obesity

A major report on the growing problem of childhood obesity calls for "fundamental changes in our society" that would affect how children spend their time and how food is advertised, packaged and sold to them. The report by the Institute of Medicine calls for schools to restrict vending machine sales and require at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Planners should design communities that encourage walking and other exercise, parents should restrict television and computer time to a total of two hours a day, and federal officials should monitor food advertising geared toward children, it says.

WASHINGTON -- Dr. C. Everett Koop, the former surgeon general who tried to persuade Americans to give up smoking, now hopes to make them thinner and fitter.Tomorrow, at a press conference at the White House, Dr. Koop is to announce the creation of a prevention campaign called "Shape Up America!" that will produce advertisements and public service announcements to encourage Americans to lose weight.Experts in the obesity field said it would be the first national effort to do something about the escalating weight of Americans, and they generally were enthusiastic about Dr. Koop's plan.

The nation's soaring obesity rates won't fall until Americans stop placing their faith in unproven and possibly fraudulent weight-loss products and treatments. That's the message from some of the nation's top obesity experts, commenting on new data about Americans' continued, naive hope for the quick fix. Part of the problem, they say, is consumers' misconceptions about safety laws. A national survey released last month at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society found that 60 percent of Americans believe incorrectly that over-the-counter dietary supplements for weight loss must be tested and proven to be safe and effective.

L ast week, I testified in the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates in support of legislation that would require restaurants to post calories alongside prices on menu boards, similar to the laws in New York City and elsewhere. Polls show that customers want this information, and studies show consumers will use it to make healthier choices. Now even the restaurant industry claims to support calorie-disclosure requirements. That's why I doubt the Maryland bill will pass. Let me explain.

A single infusion of an intestinal hormone made people eat less for the rest of the day, regardless of whether they were fat or thin, researchers are reporting today. The hormone, PYY (for peptide YY 3-36), is of particular interest because it appears to be the intestine's signal of satiety and because overweight people normally make less of it than thin people. Researchers are trying to learn whether some people grow fat because they do not make enough of it and thus get only a weak chemical signal to stop eating.

Predictions that a new prescription weight-loss pill will attract millions of frustrated dieters have some doctors worrying about a potential side effect that is worse than fat -- a deadly lung disease called primary pulmonary hypertension.Lung specialists concede they have not proved that the drug, to be sold as Redux, triggers the disease. Even if the link is proved, the risk may be very small for the individual patient taking the medication.But they said the affliction is so serious that the drug should be prescribed only for the truly obese -- and even then, with extreme caution.

PHILADELPHIA -- Many people can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease by losing weight, eating healthy foods, and staying mentally and physically active, researchers told an international conference yesterday. New studies in the United States and Scandinavia have strengthened earlier research that identified a healthy lifestyle as a path to a healthy mind. Many of the suggested activities are also recommended for the prevention of heart disease and stroke, raising the possibility that the conditions have common origins.

Today's young Americans might be the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents because obesity will shave two to five years off the average life expectancy by 2050, a new study asserts. The pessimistic report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, challenges expectations about ever-increasing longevity and rebukes government demographers for not including the future toll of obesity in their calculations. Obesity already reduces life expectancy by four to nine months on average, and if trends continue it could take as great a toll as accidental deaths or cancer, the study concludes.

Treating obesity related illnesses in America cost about $75 billion last year - or $350 for every adult in the country. Taxpayers bore most of the financial burden through the government's Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs, according to a study released yesterday, and officials predicted the staggering costs would increase along with the swelling ranks of excessively fat Americans. The study was conducted by a private research firm, RTI International in North Carolina, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

In tall, stainless-steel vats that look as if they belong in a microbrewery, Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., is brewing up what could be a new anti-obesity drug - a naturally occurring human protein being tested in patients.At a plant in Nutley, N.J., Hoffmann-La Roche hopes to begin mass-producing a new diet pill called Xenical, the first chemical of a class that blocks the uptake of fats from the digestive system.On the heels of discovering several natural chemicals that make rats and mice ravenously hungry, several companies are moving quickly to develop drugs that suppress appetite, block digestion of fat or increase the rate at which the body burns calories.