II 110th CONGRESS 2d Session S. 3584 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES September 25 (legislative day, September 17), 2008 Mr. Bingaman introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions A BILL To comprehensively prevent, treat, and decrease overweight and obesity in our Nation’s populations.

1.

Short title

This Act may be cited as the Obesity Prevention, Treatment, and Research Act of 2008.

2.

Findings

Congress finds the following: (1)In 2001, the United States Surgeon General released the Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity to bring attention to the public health problems related to obesity. (2)Since the Surgeon General’s call to action, the problems of obesity and overweight have become epidemic, occurring in all ages, ethnicities and races, and individuals in every State. (3)The United States now has the highest prevalence of obesity among the developed nations, according to 2006 data by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The prevalence of obesity in the United States (34 percent) is more than twice the average for other developed nations (13 percent). The closest nation in prevalence of obesity is the United Kingdom (24 percent) which is over 25 percent less than the United States. (4)The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2006 estimated that 32 percent of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 and an alarming 66 percent of adults are overweight or obese. (5)More than 30 percent of young people in grades 9 through 12 do not regularly engage in vigorous intensity physical activity, while almost 40 percent of adults are sedentary and 70 percent report getting less than 20 minutes of regular physical activity per day. (6)The Institute of Medicine, in their 2005 publication Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance, reported that over the last 3 decades, the rate of childhood obesity has tripled for children aged 6 to 11 years, and doubled for children aged 2 to 5 years old and in adolescents aged 12 to 19 years old. In 2004, approximately 9,000,000 children over 6 years of age were obese. Only 2 percent of children eat a healthy diet consistent with Federal nutrition guidelines. (7)For children born in 2000, it is estimated the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is 40 percent for females and 30 percent for males. (8)Overweight and obesity disproportionately affect minority populations and women. According to the 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System of the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention, 61 percent of adults in the United States are overweight or obese. (9)The Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention estimates the annual expenditures related to overweight and obesity in the United States to be $117,000,000,000 in 2001 and rising rapidly. (10)The Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the increase in the number of overweight and obese Americans between 1987 and 2001 resulted in a 27 percent increase in per capita health costs, and that as many as 112,000 deaths per year are associated with obesity. (11)Being overweight or obese increases the risk of chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, arthritis, and other health problems. (12)According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, individuals who are obese have a 50 to 100 percent increased risk of premature death. (13)Healthy People 2010 goals identify overweight and obesity as 1 of the Nation’s leading health problems and include objectives for increasing the proportion of adults who are at a healthy weight, reducing the proportion of adults who are obese, and reducing the proportion of children and adolescents who are overweight or obese. (14)Another Healthy People 2010 goal is to eliminate health disparities among different segments of the population. Obesity is a health problem that disproportionally impacts medically underserved populations. (15)Food and beverage advertisers are estimated to spend $10,000,000 to $12,000,000,000 per year to target children and youth. (16)The United States spends less than 2 percent of its annual health expenditures on prevention. (17)Employer health promotion investments net a return of $3 for every $1 invested. (18)High-energy dense and low-nutrient dense foods represent 30 percent of American’s total calorie intake. Fast food company menus are twice the energy density of recommended healthful diets. (19)Research suggests that individuals eat too much high-energy dense foods without feeling full because the brain’s pathways that regulate hunger and influence normal food intake are not triggered by these foods. (20)Packaging, product placement, and high-energy dense food content manipulation contribute to the overweight and obesity epidemic in the United States. (21)Such marketing and content manipulation techniques have been used by other industries to encourage consumption at the expense of health. To help individuals make healthy choices, education and information must be available with clear, consistent, and accurate labeling.