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Chapter 1. It’s a Complicated Web

When I give my talks to the public, I often show a series of maps of the U.S., year by year, from 1985 to the present. The effect is always shocking. The maps show each state in a color that indicates obesity rates—from cool, blue colors for low obesity to warm, fiery colors for high obesity. Over the 25 years, the overall color of the map gradually turns from light blue to darker blue to pale red to darker red, to bright orange. By 2009, most of the country is either red or orange, indicating that more than 30 percent of the population is obese. It looks like the spread of some horrible epidemic. And it is. What the map doesn’t show is that another 35 percent of our population is overweight.

Not long ago, my husband came to one of my talks. As we were driving home, he said, “Mim, you’ve been working in the field of nutrition for a long time, overlapping almost identically with the obesity maps you showed. I know you’ve been working hard, but what have you been working on? It’s a good question and one I’ve thought a lot about over the past five years. When I think of the billions of dollars that have gone into research, public health, and education since the mid-1980s, I have to ask, “Have we been focusing our efforts on the wrong target?” For years, we’ve emphasized individual responsibility. We need to refocus our lens in light of new research showing that these approaches don’t work if an individual’s social and physical environment remains unchanged.

Obesity Trends in U.S. between 1985 and 2009