Fed Up

...on the bridge, a little

bit slow right now on the lower level.

Upper level

looking much better.

Thanks, Al.

8:
05 on this Wednesday morning.

Time now for a check of your

Mathis Brothers...

The bottom line is,

you know, the epidemic here, Susan,

is worse than previously estimated...

probably much worse.

We have this new report

coming out overnight

from the Journal of the American

Medical Association...

...of Doctors has described this week

what it calls an emerging epidemic.

Military leaders called

that a threat to national security.

If it doesn't

affect you personally,

it will affect you indirectly by someone

you know, someone in your family.

It is just going up

much faster than we thought.

The problem

just keeps getting worse.

This is a terror from within.

It is a global epidemic.

Epidemic.

Clearly something's gone wrong.

Kids are being told the biggest

lie they will ever hear in their lives.

She cannot... literally

cannot calm herself down.

In the past quarter century,

the number of overweight

children has grown from

one in 20 to nearly

one in five.

Used to be you'd have one or two

heavyset kids in a class.

Now we get eight or 10.

This year, for the first time

in the history of the world,

more people will die from the effects

of obesity than from starvation.

This has ramifications

far beyond obesity itself

It is worse than even smoking.

The cost of this is about...

Half a trillion dollars

in additional health care cost...

half a trillion.

The American Academy

of Family Physicians

partnered up with Coca-Cola.

Isn't this a conflict of interest?

Hope that the American

Academy of Family Physicians

is looking for...

Researchers say obesity is causing

more and more cases of cancer.

and is now catching up to

smoking as the leading cause...

It started out as a small story,

I had no idea I'd be talking about

weight gain and obesity

my entire career.

We've been covering the problem

and solutions for over 30 years.

It's sweatin' time.

In that time, entire industries

have ignited over the weight problem.

I will never

look like that again.

First came the magazines,

then the talk shows-

And how was the diet for you?

This is the miracle

we've been waiting for.

And now our epidemic is entertainment

on network television.

How is this still an issue,

much less a worldwide epidemic

We get new solutions

every day

Everything in the grocery store is made

with less fat and fewer calories

and yet our kids keep

getting bigger and sicker.

It makes no sense.

Is there a link between our

ever-expanding waistlines

and the government's

own dietary guidelines?

And that got me thinking,

what if the solutions

weren't really solutions at all?

The Bush administration

is resisting a plan

from the World Health

Organization to fight obesity...

What if they were

actually making things worse?

There are a very high percentage

of young people overweight

because of a number of things

that have happened in our country

in the last several years.

What if our whole approach

to this epidemic has been dead wrong?

Sorry. Okay.

Uh, let me fix this.

You know, one person told me

that fat people

were just made to be fat.

And I don't think that's true.

And I know it's hard,

'cause I'm still overweight.

And right now I feel

like I always will be.

Why do you not eat vegetables, Taylor?

- 'Cause I do not like them.

- Why?

- I don't.

- Why not?

'Cause I don't.

You just say you don't,

but you don't have a reason.

- Yes, I do.

- What's the reason?

I don't.

Being in the South,

we eat a lot of fattening things.

We eat macaroni and cheese,

fried cube steak, fried chicken.

And that's what we're used to.

That's what I've grown up doing.

I've done what my parents done.

My parents have done what they've done.

It's passed on from generation.

And once you start overeating,

it becomes the worst habit,

and it just grows.

The first time

that I think he ever mentioned

the teasing...

calling him fat or something,

I think it was probably

around the age of eight.

Some girls told him they wanted

to see how fast he could run,

and he ran.

And later, another girl

came to him and told him..

that they were laughing at him,

and they just wanted him to run

so they could see his fat shake.

He stayed upset

about that for so long.

- We ready to eat, Mama?

- Mm-hmm.

I'm 15, and I weigh

around 215 pounds.

If you like it that way.

I'd like to lose

about 50 to 55 pounds.

I could do so many more things.

Maybe I could play football

or play baseball.

I've always had an interest

in baseball.

We talk about it a lot...

about, you know, the weight thing and

I've always been overweight.

And I was overweight at his age.

And I don't want him to be having

to obsess about weight his whole life.

You know, I want him to be able to focus

on other things that are more important.

I really think

he wants to lose weight.

I just think he doesn't

know how to do it.

Everybody else doesn't look

at it the same way as I do.

I look at it as I'm failing,

and they just look at it

as he's just another fat kid

Kids are obese for two reasons...

They have voracious appetites,

and they don't exercise enough.

Americans view

overweight people as lazy,

unambitious

and lacking willpower.

All we have to do is have

people eat less and exercise more.

Not a very big problem.

The subtle message is

"It's your fault you're fat."

All you need to do

is eat less, exercise more.

It's all about personal responsibility,

about willpower.

That's the message

that's been pushed on us.

I want to see you all moving,

all right?

Forget about it.

"Eat less, exercise more".

has been the common sense

answer to unwanted weight

for more than half a century.

This was the science.

And it started with a mouse.

The year was 1953.

Up until this point,

exercise had been considered taboo.

Doctors even warned it would cause heart

attacks and diminish your sex drive.

Then came Dr. Jean Mayer,

a French physiologist

who would become the foremost

expert on obesity in the U.S.

He noted that large lab mice

ate virtually the same amount

as smaller mice.

But the big ones weren't

nearly as active afterwards.

Mayer's conclusion,

lack of exercise must be related

to weight gain.

His finding sparked

a fitness revolution.

This is where you come

and punish yourself for fun...

or rather, for your health.

Here we go now.

We're gonna step apart together

To the right. Apart...

By the time Jane Fonda

became the face of fitness,

Americans were spending billions

of dollars trying to lose weight.

Let's get physical

Physical

I wanna get physical

But as more and more people

began exercising,

more and more waistlines

grew out of control.

Between 1980 and 2000,

fitness club memberships more than

doubled across the United States.

During that same time,

the obesity rate also doubled.

A decade later,

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