Obesity Kills More Than Hunger

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Something to think about as we navigate a health care plan. A new report by the World Health Organization documents how one-quarter of the total 60 million annual deaths annually are premature and preventable deaths.

Furthermore, global life expectancy would increase by 5 years if we tackled 5 preventable factors affecting health. These are: underweight children, unprotected sex, alcohol abuse, unsafe water and related sanitation and hygiene issues, plus high blood pressure.

The report, Global health risks, describes 24 factors that shape human health and longevity. They are a mixture of environmental, behavioral, and physiological factors, including preventable societal ills, like air pollution.

Eight factors alone account for over 75 percent of coronary heart disease deaths—the leading cause of death worldwide. These eight factors include booze abuse, smoking, and low fruit and vegetable intake. Obesity creates or contributes to the other causes: high blood glucose, high blood pressure, high body mass index, high cholesterol, and physical inactivity.

Worldwide, overweight and obesity now cause more deaths than underweight.

Combining any or all of these factors gets deadly in a hurry, the report notes. Reducing even one risk increases longevity.

A few other sad and preventable highlights:

  • Nine environmental and behavioral risks, together with 7 infectious causes, are responsible for 45 percent of cancer deaths worldwide
  • Unhealthy and unsafe environments cause one in four child deaths worldwide
  • 71% of lung cancer deaths are caused by tobacco smoking
  • Easily remedied nutritional deficiencies prevent one in 38 newborns from reaching the age of five in low-income countries
  • 10 leading preventable risks decrease life expectancy by nearly 7 years globally and by more than 10 years for Africa

It’s the challenge of our individual and collective future: to eat right (be it more or less), exercise more, quit smoking, drink booze in moderation, wear condoms, clean the waters, clean the air. That should keep us busy for 80 years or more, a decent lifespan.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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