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Obesity means having a Body Mass Index, or BMI, of over 30, or in common parlance being at least 30 pounds overweight. The trend is very alarming. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in this country. Between 1991 and 1998 – in less than a decade – the proportion of obese people in the United States has increased 50%; from 12 percent to 17.9 percent. Some groups – people between the ages of 18 and 29, Hispanics, and people with some college education – accounted for the largest increases. The largest regional increases were in the South.

Obesity is much less common among college graduates than among the rest of the population. A college education translates into a variety of income and lifestyle advantages that make this so. For example, a recent survey of American adults found that 37% of college graduates participate in regular physical activities, while only 18% of people who did not graduate from high school do so. This is quite a departure from the early years of this century, when lower-income people incorporated more physical activity into their daily lives through labor and walking, while higher-income people had the luxury of being lazier and eating richer diets.

Currently, nearly 248,000 of deaths among adults each year – 11.6% of all deaths – are attributed to obesity. If prevalence rates were the same for everyone as they are for college graduates, 73,000 deaths (or 3 percent of all deaths), could be averted.