Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1963)

DON'T LET THE ADS KID YOU! Shedding those excess pounds is never easy, but you'll enjoy a longer life if you succeed Obesity has become a major health problem in the United States. It is estimated that more than 20 per cent of the adults over 30 years of age in this country are obese, with a much higher percentage being classified as overweight. The mortality rate increases as excess pounds accumulate. Among people who are 25 per cent or more overweight, the mortality rate is 50 per cent higher than for people of normal weight. How people become overweight is a matter of simple mathematics. If a person consumes 500 calories more per day than needed for energy expended, at the end of the week there is another pound of fat tucked away in those embarrassingly conspicuous rolls around the mid-section of the body. And it isn't difficult to toss those 500 unneeded calories down the hatch. Three martinis at a businessman's luncheon will do the job, or, if your taste runs to things sweet, a quarter pound of fudge serves the same purpose. We know how we get fat, but many times we really don't know why. Some of us develop childhood eating habits that can only result in obesity if we don't change them. The old tale that a fat child is a happy child should be forgotten, and parents should consider one of their primary obligations to be to teach their children to consume diets that are well balanced in both quality and quantity. Many of us overeat to satisfy psychological needs that we may not understand and which we have not learned to handle in more satisfactory ways. Eating is seldom simply a matter of stoking the furnace to keep the fires burning. We attach much psychological value to food and to the process of eating the food. Obesity is a National Health Problem Obesity is a major health problem and must be attacked energetically if millions of Americans are not to cut their lives short and to live out those shorter lives less happily than their less weighty fellows. Today it is increasingly embarrassing to be a "fatty." The age when "everyone loves a fat man" is dead and gone, and we'll all be healthier for it— if we learn to keep weight under control. Speaking purely from the mechanics involved, there are two ways to lose BROADCASTING, March 18, 1963 weight. You can reduce total food intake to the point where the body fat is called upon to supply calories. The other way to shed pounds is to increase physical activity enough so that the calories expended daily exceed the calories consumed in the food. It now appears that, for most people, a combination of these two methods — less food intake and increased physical activity— works best. Plan Sensible Weight Control Programs There are several very important points to keep in mind if someone in your family is concerned about weight reduction or weight control : 1. Motivation: Assuming that the overweight person does not have psychological problems which may require treatment first, everyone in the family can be important in providing the motivation needed to change eating habits to lose weight. There are many positive goals toward which the weight reducer should move. He can concentrate on reducing the risks of early death or serious illness arising from overweight. He should be encouraged to consider his personal appearance and how it might be improved. Weight controllers need help and encouragement, and much of this can be furnished by the family. A start might be to list all the reasons in favor of losing weight. 2. Medical Supervision: Weight can be controlled without the help of the family physician, but there are many good reasons why medical supervision of the weight control program is the wise way. Your physician knows you best, from the health point of view, and can help you set a reasonable goal for your weight. He can check your general health and make sure that you are losing weight without damage to your general health. 3. Exercise: Any person not physically handicapped, and whether worried about weight or not, should have a regular program of daily physical exercise. The human body functions better if the muscles are used regularly. 4. Well Balanced Diet: Avoid the crash and fad diets for losing weight, for they seldom succeed in keeping weight down. Often they are dangerous because they do not provide necessary food nutrients. A well balanced diet is one that provides all the different food nutrients — protein, minerals, vitamins, fat, etc. — needed for good health, but balance also means quantity as well as quality. You don't need special foods on most weight control diets. You should eat every day from the four basic food groups : ( 1 ) milk and milk products ; (2) meat, fish, poultry ; (3) fruits and vegetables; (4) breads and cereals. Select from all these groups, adjusting total food intake to the number of calories necessary to maintain or to reduce weight, depending upon your goal. Dairy Foods Fit Well In Weight Control Diets Some people think they must reduce or eliminate milk and other dairy foods to lose weight. If you are interested in losing weight healthfully, keep this in mind : two 8-ounce glasses of milk per day provide for an adult man 25% of the protein he needs, and this is very high quality protein; 71% of the calcium — adults, like children, need calcium to maintain good health; 46% of the riboflavin; 15% of the vitamin A; 10-12%, of the thiamine; plus other nutrients in less important quantities. (These are among the essential food nutrients listed as recommended daily dietary allowances by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council.) Milk provides all these essential adult nutrients at a calorie cost that is low when compared with other foods that would supply equivalent amounts of these nutrients. Two 8-ounce glasses of whole milk supply about 320 calories. If your doctor has recommended an extremely low calorie diet for you, skim milk, which has about 90 calories per 8-ounce glass, may be substituted. Ordinarily this is not necessary in the weight control diet designed to establish a new eating pattern. Reprints of this statement and a booklet, Family Feeding for Fitness and Fun, are available at no charge. Write to American Dairy Association, 20 N. Wacker Drive, Chicago 6, Illinois. j|!oE aniorican dairy association 'Voice of the Dairy Farmers in the Market Places of America" 71