Columnist Susan Snyder: Weight: Another problem

Tuesday, July 15, 2003 | 8:07 a.m.

Obesity has become the smoking gun of the 21st century.

Or rather, the gun that once was smoking.

It took decades for society to concede that smoking tobacco caused health risks as serious as cancer, even to those who breathed it secondhand.

Now, casino and bar cultures not withstanding, it's hardly acceptable to smoke anywhere. It is not only illegal but culturally unacceptable to smoke indoors in most places and even in some outdoor arenas.

We think nothing of sending our smoking co-workers, friends and relatives outside in 115-degree heat to light up because, hey, it's their choice.

I, for one, don't want to smell or breathe their stinky clouds.

It is an incredibly hard habit to break but an incredibly easy one to never start. As a result, smoking has become somewhat of a character flaw. Look at the number of personal ads that include non-smoking as a character requisite.

Enter obesity.

By now, we all know that 60 percent of Americans are overweight, and half of those people are considered obese. That means they are roughly 30 pounds or more overweight.

Obesity is the No. 1 cause of death in this country because it brings with it increased risks of the diabetes, heart disease, strokes and cancers that kill people, along with arthritis and other maladies that make them miserable.

Type 2 diabetes, which used to be called adult onset diabetes, now is being seen in children who have grown up on Happy Meals and fatty, fast-food diets.

Overweight people pay more for airline tickets and health care, and they also make health insurance rates higher for everyone.

There are all kinds of really good reasons for dropping weight, just like there are really good reasons to stop smoking.

But unlike smoking, being chubby isn't necessarily a choice. Ask any pudgy kid if he wants to be fat.

Last summer I squirreled away a USA Today article quoting international obesity expert Philip James, who chairs the International Obesity Task Force nonprofit group.

I figured it wouldn't be long before we looked at being overweight as a character flaw, rather than a societal issue.

James said a year ago that we Americans are sabotaging ourselves when it comes to losing weight. We believe that maintaining a healthy weight is an individual decision, no matter how incredibly difficult we make it to do so. We make bottom-line choices, but we're looking at the wrong bottoms.

We bombard our children with junk-food advertisements. We sell fatty, sugary foods in school, then rely on a sixth-grader to opt for milk over a Coke.

We've made it nearly impossible, or at the very least unpleasant, to add some activity in our daily lives. Bicycling and walking are transportation choices only if you're too poor, too old or too young to drive.

Compare the elevators to the stairways (if you can find them) in most public or corporate buildings. The elevators are posh and carpeted. The stairwells look like prison corridors.

Obesity is not a character flaw.

It is a battle we are fighting in an environment that prizes being thin on the one hand and shoves cheeseburgers at us with the other.