Anyone who has ever added extra pounds knows it’s much easier to gain weight than to lose it. Now the nation is learning that lesson too.

In what is becoming an annual warning that goes unheeded in too many households, the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation last week issued their latest annual report on obesity.

The closest thing to good news is that childhood obesity rates, though too high at 17 percent, have stabilized in the past decade and declined in some places. For adults, the rate of increase in obesity ― it has doubled since 1980 ― is finally beginning to slow, but it remains far too high.

In Pennsylvania, 30 percent of the population is obese. That puts the state among 20, including Ohio, where the rate exceeds 30 percent. In West Virginia and Mississippi, the rate exceeds 35 percent.

The average American is more than 24 pounds heavier today than in 1960. In 1990, no state had an obesity rate exceeding 15 percent; now, no state has a rate that low. Colorado’s is lowest, at 21.3 percent.

Those numbers are an indictment of a culture built on high-calorie food and too little exercise.

If America doesn’t soon go on a collective diet, the health risks associated with too much weight ― including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes ― will continue to go up with the numbers on the nation’s scales.

The report recommends steps for individuals and it recognizes an approach exemplified by Allegheny County Health Director Karen Hacker’s initiative, Live Well Allegheny. The whole community can benefit from being educated on healthy habits and from government policies that encourage the consumption of fresh food and more daily exercise.

Dropping pounds is not easy, but it’s time for America to get in shape for a healthier future.

(Editorial, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

(MCT Information Services)