Six years into First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to end childhood obesity, it turns out there are actually more fat people in the United States now than there were in 2008.
Launched in 2010, the First Lady’s signature program’s stated goal was "solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight.”
But a half-decade of traumatizing American school children with mush lunches and blowing through millions in both taxpayer and donated cash, and the overall obesity rate is actually higher now than before the program was launched.
According to a new poll from Gallup, the percentage of obese Americans has risen from 25.5 percent to 28.3 percent since 2008. Gallup explains:
Since 2008, obesity has increased by nearly three points to 28.3%, and lifetime diagnoses of diabetes have increased about one point to 11.5%, a statistically significant climb.
The number of people who say they suffer from depression has increased from 16.1 percent to 17.7 percent in the same time frame, while the number of Americans who suffer from diabetes increased from 10.6 to 11.5 percent.
On top of that, six years after President Obama signed his signature health care initiative into law, fewer Americans say they consider themselves to be in “excellent” health than in 2008. Gallup notes:
Americans' self-assessments of overall health have slipped since 2008. Currently, 19.0% of U.S. adults report that their health is "excellent," compared with 22.6% in 2008, before President Barack Obama took office.
...Personal health assessments worsened across all four major racial and ethnic groups -- whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians -- with the greatest drops coming from Asians (down 5.5 percentage points) and whites (down 3.8 points). Blacks' and Hispanics' assessments each dropped by less than two points.
Gallup also said those who consider themselves to be in “poor” or “fair” health has remained the same.