A disturbing statistic revealing the dismal state of health in America is that more than 40 percent of the population is obese (defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having a body mass index of 30 or higher); nearly 10 percent are morbidly obese. It's shocking how these numbers have increased over the years; in the 1960s, only 13 percent of the population was seriously overweight. And it isn't just adults who are affected; one in three American children is overweight or obese today, compared to only around five percent as recently as the late 1970s.

Obesity is associated with some of the most serious health problems facing Americans, including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure (hypertension), kidney failure, heart disease, heart attacks and strokes, sleep apnea and other breathing disorders, gallbladder and liver diseases and even certain types of cancers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, obesity was the most frequent comorbidity in patients who died with the disease. In September 2020, Science magazine published data showing that obese individuals who contracted COVID-19 were "113% more likely than people of healthy weight to land in the hospital, 74% more likely to be admitted to an ICU, and 48% more likely to die." Of the COVID-19 patients under 45 years old who died, 60% were obese.

The statistical correlation between race, obesity and death from COVID-19 was dramatic. As I wrote in an October 2020 column, citing CDC data:

"Non-Hispanic Blacks represent 13% of the U.S. population but have the highest COVID-19 mortality rate of any group -- two times that of whites and Asians. The next highest mortality group is among indigenous peoples (less than 1% of the population), followed by Latinos (only 16.7% of the population). Asian Americans have the lowest mortality........

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