Title: Obesity? Diabetes? We’ve been set up – Harvard Gazette
Headings: Obesity? Diabetes? We’ve been set up
Health & Medicine
Obesity? Diabetes? We’ve been set up
Harvard researchers are targeting obesity and its cousin, diabetes
To know who we are, see who we were
What amounts to a deadly lifestyle
Doing something about the problem
Encouraging a healthy Harvard

Content: Studies have shown that becoming overweight is a major risk factor in developing type 2 diabetes. Today, roughly 30 percent of overweight people have the disease, and 85 percent of diabetics are overweight. Figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that we live in a nation where skinny and normal-weight people are actually in the minority. A third of us are overweight, and another third are so overweight we’re obese. Government figures show obesity rates rising steadily from roughly 13 percent in the 1960s to 34 percent in 2007-2008, with numbers flattening out in recent years. Diabetes cases have risen along with obesity, with prevalence doubling in the past 20 years. Today, 11 percent of adults over age 20 are diabetic, and HSPH Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology Frank Hu said he expects the numbers to keep rising. “We haven’t seen any sign of the epidemic slowing,” Hu said. Not all diabetes cases are linked to weight. Genetics also comes into play.