06/17/2026
In this episode of public health is weird..
By the late 1990s, leaders at the CDC were warning that obesity had become an epidemic.
At the time:
• About 30% of U.S. adults had obesity
• About 14% of children and teens had obesity
Today, those numbers are even higher.
Which raises an important question:
If we’ve been talking about this for decades…, why does it keep getting worse? 🧐🧐
And why have the solutions we’ve tried failed to make a dent? 🧐
It’s kinda weird…
But I suspect it’s because the problem is tangled up with modern life itself…and we can’t just up and quit the modern world.
It’s the food we eat.
How we move.
How we sleep.
How we work.
How we commute.
How we interact with our devices.
How stressed we are.
The connections (and disconnections) we feel.
GLP-1 meds may help some people. But it’s also true that a high % of people stop taking them & the weight comes back on…and large public health problems rarely disappear because of a single intervention. (Especially one increasingly starting in childhood.)
And especially when the problem is woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Which is why this issue deserves science, compassion, and a lot more CREATIVITY.
No matter the level of nostalgia, we’re not going back to hunting and gathering. 🦕🦖 ( At least the majority isn’t.)
But we may need a lot more imagination when it comes to helping humans thrive in this modern world we’ve gone ahead & built ourselves.
As always, happy to hear your thoughts on the matter! 😊
