![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In 2000, a People magazine survey found only one-quarter had dieted at any point in the last year. According to a 2002 survey published in USA Today, only one out of every five women said losing weight was a top priority. Does America have an obsession with weight? Campos certainly seems to think so he calls America "a nation of dieters." Yet, unlike the fictional Bridget Jones, studies and surveys find that while some Americans are dieting, a majority are not, and a surprising percentage-one-third to one-half- rarely or never diet. In the end, science and medicine corrected itself. ![]() The public wants quick and easy answers, but real medical progress is often slow, expensive, and fraught with contradictory studies. The CDC criticisms gloss over just how difficult and imprecise medical research can be. Furthermore, the whole controversy may leave some with the impression that obesity is not a health threat, when in fact it clearly is. The dire warnings and hype surrounding West Nile virus, ebola, flu, anthrax, Mad Cow disease, and even AIDS, to name just a few, all far outstripped any reasonable public health threat. The fact is that obesity is only the latest in a long list of public health threats that have been overstated by a sensationalist news media (and, to a lesser degree, by the medical community). While Campos and other critics gloat in vindication, it pays to be skeptical of the skeptics. Gerberding admitted, that various estimates of obesity's death toll were consistently overstated. ![]()
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