View Part 1, Consequences: and jot down notes as you view. The Weight of the Nation, a four part presentation of HBO and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), in association with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and in partnership with the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and Kaiser Permanente is a series which examines the scope of the obesity epidemic and explores the serious health consequences of being overweight or obese.
Write a response to highlighting one or more of the following after viewing:
- What is your opinion of this documentary?
- What do you think about the longitudinal NIH-funded Bogalusa Heart Study, created by cardiologist Gerald Bevenson in 1972? This study is following 16,000 started in childhood and now adults (40 years thus far). Researchers have looked at several things, on those living, as well as performing autopsies on 560 of these individuals who died since then (of accidental death or otherwise). 20% of autopsied children had plaques (fat deposits) in their coronary arteries, making this the first study of its kind to establish heart disease can exist in children and those who were obese as children were likely to remain so in adulthood, as opposed to only 7% becoming obese who were not so in childhood.
- They measured blood pressure and cholesterol. What did they find? Explain the overall significance to this study.
- Which keywords do you think we will be hearing much of as we continue learning about the effects of food on the body? Define and/or explain.
- Only less than one third of people in the country can maintain their weight. What do you think accounts for the significant rise in morbid obesity rates since 1988, the past ~25 years? Include any information you may have read from the first two chapters discussing obesity in the United States.
- Do you think people understand processed foods contain either more sugars or more fats to “engineer” the taste to our liking? (replacement of fats in products with sugars or sugars with fats)
- What other observations were made in this documentary which you may of found of interest? Processed foods, education, school activity programs (like gym class), the affect of pollutants in the environment on the ability of people to metabolize food efficiently, food policy changes, food production) and perhaps something else you thought of while watching.
- What else did you find of interest in this documentary?
More information:
Weight of the Nation Information web page:
Should you decide to continue and watch any other parts of this 4 part HBO series, here are the links:
