Are Restaurants Really Supersizing America ? † By

Obesity rates in the United States have been growing rapidly in recent years. Whereas 15 percent of Americans were obese in 1980 (defined as having a body mass index of at least 30), 34 percent were obese in 2004 (Center for Disease Control 2007). The time series of obesity rates in the United States, plotted in Figure 1 (solid line), reveals that the rate of increase over the past quarter-century has been substantially greater than during the preceding two decades. Medical research has linked obesity to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers. Treating these diseases is expensive. Health care spending attributed to obesity reached $78.5 billion in 1998 and continues to grow (Eric A. Finkelstein, Ian C. Fiebelkorn, and Guijing Wang 2003). Although obesity is a serious and growing problem, its causes are not well understood.

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