Thirty years ago, I was sitting in a small apartment in Queens, New York, writing a term paper for my exercise science class entitled, "The Obesity Epidemic." I can�t recall much about the paper, except for the first sentence that began with: "We eat too much, don�t exercise, grow fat and wonder why." The paper was a stark forecast of where we are at today.

For the past 30 years, the National Institutes of Health spent most of their financial resources searching for cures for cancer, diabetes and obesity. Unfortunately, these diseases are still with us today and in substantially greater numbers than they were three decades ago.

Instead of balancing our precious federal dollars over the last 30 years between �cure� and �prevention,� we rolled the dice on �cure� and lost. People are heavier today than they were 30 years ago; we exercise less; and we eat substantially more.

Read the entire column at http://www.ncpad.org/339/1997/2006-02~Issue~Obesity~Swells~ Into~a~Mega-Epidemic.