For too many American women, working a 40-hour per week job (if they are fortunate enough to have one), commuting, and then caring for a home and family can be exhausting. And so they stop to pick up fast food for dinner, or take highly-processed convenience foods, stuffed full of salt, sugar, fat and chemical preservatives from their cabinet shelves or freezers. Worried about how Johnny is doing in his studies while she drives him to soccer practice only adds to her stress over finishing up the quarterly reports that are due at work the next day—if she wants to keep her job.
She would probably not be surprised at the results of recent studies on women’s health, if she could ever find the time to read any of them. The June 7, 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association included a survey titled “Trends in Obesity Among Adults in the United States, 2005 to 2014.” The conclusion, from the abstract:
In this nationally representative survey of adults in the United States, the age-adjusted prevalence of obesity in 2013-2014 was 35.0% among men and 40.4% among women. The corresponding values for class 3 obesity were 5.5% for men and 9.9% for women. For women, the prevalence of overall obesity and of class 3 obesity showed significant linear trends for increase between 2005 and 2014; there were no significant trends for men. Other studies are needed to determine the reasons for these trends.