America’s weight problem has reached epidemic proportions, medical experts say. Today, over 42 percent of the population is considered obese—a figure that’s increased by nearly 50 percent since 1999—and the implications for our nation’s health are hard to overstate. Obesity is linked with several of America’s leading causes of death, including increased rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, liver disease, cancer, and more. In cases of severe obesity, life expectancies drop not by an average of mere years, but by a full decade or more.
