the majority of americans believe obesity is a serious issue. look at that, 81%. we don t agree on anything at 81%. somehow americans believe it is a serious problem and something must be done. it does make you wonder about the impact of defining more than a third of the country as sick. joining me now are dr. patrice harris, a member of the ama board of trustees and the chief of bariatric surgery at new york s presbyterian hospital. the blogger behind black girl s guide to weight loss and jonathan, director of the center for medicine, health, society at vanderbilt university. so nice too far you here. nice to be here. lets start with why the decision to make obesity and define it as a disease. thank you for having me, melissa. one in three adults are obese in this country. the rate of childhood obesity
story. we will have more on moral mondays. i want to thank jelani and kai and joshua, not only for being here but pulling together for a fast segment on north carolina. bryon will be back later. coming up, a major change in the battle against obesity, changing attitudes towards weight then and now. that s up next. in parks across the country, families are coming together to play, stay active, and enjoy the outdoors. and for the last four summers, coca-cola has asked america to choose its favorite park through our coca-cola parks contest.
you might notice none of the people have heads or faces. the assumption is no one would want to be identified being fat because it s so stigmatizing. my former colleague wrote a big fat rights. she calls this headless fatty. they never show the head. doesn t make what s in your head. we re laden with cultural stigmas of obesity that reinforce this idea it s a problem of will. getting back to the industries, seriously, coke is an issue but look at the changing size of in the 1950s, a movie popcorn was 170 calories, now it s like 83 big macs, the hershey bar has grown, the first paula deen scandal before this was about eat fatty foods, sorry, i m being funded by diabetes
it s much more than will power and people s fault. i m not sure we understand entirely. jonathan. i m sensitive and supportive of the arguments that classifying this as a disease will allow more people to get reimbursement for treatments and i think that s a very important side effect of this. i m quite concerned about classifying this as a disease for two reasons. one is that the definition of what obesity is is incredibly slippery. we often use this thing called body mass index. bmi, i have one on my iphone. it s horrible, isn t it? the thing is by that definition, a lot of times people who meet criteria for overweight are incredibly healthy. people with a lower bmi can have a lot of medical issues people relate to. in the absence of a standard definition of what a disease is, i think obesity is open to all kinds of judgments in a certain diagnostic way. we know from history obesity is not just a disease by itself,
has tripled over the last couple of decades. so the a mulch a believes this policy will elevate obesity to the level that will raise awareness, call more attention to the disease, and actually change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue. let me push a little bit on this. if one in three americans is struggling with obesity, it almost makes me less likely to believe it s a disease and more likely to feel like either it s a norm and not a diseased or pathological state. or if you look at the speed of the rate of change how quickly so many more americans have become so much heavier, that it can t possibly be pathology in our bodies. our bodies don t change that fast. it must be our structural environment. complex factors lead to obesity, environmental, genetic, behavior. these all lead to obesity.