A Global Population Boom

Morbid bail-out for Social Security?

Life is short – and getting shorter

Everyone knows that we’re in the middle of a global population boom. But I recently read an astonishing factoid that puts this exponential explosion into stark perspective. Here it is: More people are alive on Earth right now than have EVER DIED. That’s right, since the rise of modern humankind so many millennia ago, fewer of us have perished than are currently breathing. This mind-boggling fact is owed to 2 things:

First, it’s due to unchecked breeding in many underdeveloped and developing nations; but second, because of the radically lengthened life spans advancements in medicine and sanitation have facilitated – a trend that’s likely to continue for every nation on Earth

Except the U.S.

According to a new report issued by researchers at Chicago’s University of Illinois and published in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the life span of the average American will plummet considerably in the coming years – in spite of all the new high-tech drugs, surgeries, and early-detection technologies we’re leading the world in developing. Why?

Because we’re all too fat, of course. We’re a soda-pop, junk-food, drive-through, pizza-and-doughnuts nation, and we don’t seem to care what it’s doing to our hearts and bodies. According to a recent Associated Press article on the new report, the most recent estimates show that:

More than 60% of the U.S. population is overweight.
One third of all adults are clinically obese.
30% of our children are either overweight or obese.
Childhood obesity has more than doubled in the last 25 years.
The incidence of childhood diabetes has increased 10 times over the last 20 years.

Currently, the U.S. life expectancy lags behind 20 other developed countries, the article states. And if nothing is done to reverse our nationwide trend toward obesity, our average life span will shorten by as much as 5 years over the next five decades. If this report’s right, obesity will soon have more of an impact on the length (and quality) of our lives than cancer or heart disease!

But there’s a morbid “silver lining” in all this death, if the report’s extrapolations are correct – one that politicians on both sides of the aisle may not entirely regret. Keep reading

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The macabre “solution” to the Social Security dilemma

If the University of Illinois report is correct, the Fools on the Hill might not have to worry about revamping the increasingly insolvent Social Security program. Why? Because many of us are eating ourselves into an early grave, that’s why.

You see, current projections for the future of Social Security are based on both an increase in population (especially among those of retirement age) AND an increase in life span. But if the trend in obesity continues unchecked, huge numbers of people in the Social Security demographic will both fail to reach collection age and/or die before collecting as much as is projected.

Convenient, huh?

Now, I’m not saying that the nationwide epidemic of obesity is a government conspiracy to avoid shelling out for Social Security (although if you really examine the hopelessly carb-heavy Food Pyramid, you could definitely make the case), but what I am saying is this: The feds, for all their talk, aren’t doing enough – or the right things – to make a meaningful difference in our waistlines, heart health, and diabetes rates in the future.

Bottom line: Whether you believe this new report or not (critics have called it “dire” and “shaky” according to the AP article), it should be clear to EVERYONE in the U.S. with intact vision that we’re definitely facing a major, growing problem with our eating habits and waistlines.

And although I’m no fan of Social Security (I think it has become viewed as a retirement plan instead of the supplemental income boost it was envisioned as), if we don’t make some changes – like ditching the sugary snacks and nutrition-less vegetables for healthy meats, fruits, milk and nuts – many of us will eat ourselves right out of the dividends the program we’ve paid into for all of these years owed to us.

Living lean – and leaning on the misguided mainstream,

William Campbell Douglass II, MD