Recently one of the college organizations, again, had a table at the Memorial Union where they passed out information about eating disorders. This year they called it “fat talk.”

I gather this was intended to stop people from making fun of fatness and to warn about the cult of thinness. I grant that anorexia and “thinness” is an issue. We know the fashion and film industry has been hammered for “Heroin Chic” in its choice of models and actresses.

However, let’s not forget that America’s biggest health and self esteem issue is obesity. While fat talk may be hurtful, denying the dangers of being overweight is silly. Fatness is the most deadly dietary and behavioral problem we face in the United States.

We all know that first lady Michelle Obama is leading an initiative to combat childhood obesity entitled “Let’s Move!” Mrs. Obama says she aims to wipe out obesity “in a generation.” Let’s Move! has partnered with other programs. On Oct. 20, Mrs. Obama was in Chicago to talk about her campaign to end childhood obesity. She came to her hometown to meet with mayors from around the country at a Walgreens drug store that was expanded to include groceries. The mayors were in Chicago for a summit on “good” food accessibility in an effort to fight the epidemic of fatness. Poor diets and fatness is the talk of the nation’s political and health leaders.

Obesity rates in the United States are the highest in the world with 74.6 percent of Americans being overweight or obese.

Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults, which increases to 80 percent if one or both of their parents are overweight or obese.

There has been an increase in obesity-related medical problems, including type two diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and disability. In particular, diabetes has become the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimating in 2008 that 57 million adults aged 20 and older were pre-diabetic , 23.6 million diabetic, with 90-95 percent of the latter being type 2 diabetic. Those numbers have grown.

Obesity has also been shown to increase the prevalence of complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Babies born to obese women are almost three times as likely to die within one month of birth and almost twice as likely to be stillborn than babies born to women of normal weight.

Rising healthcare costs associated with pediatric obesity and its co-morbidities are staggering and an unsustainable burden on US healthcare. The surgeon general of the United States has predicted that preventable morbidity and mortality associated with obesity surpasses those associated with cigarette smoking, which has been the most alarming preventable health issue in America.

The direct medical cost of obesity and indirect economic loss to obesity has been estimated to be $117 billion in 2000. This exceeds health care costs from smoking or problem drinking. Obesity now accounts for 6 to 12 percent of national health care expenditures in the United States.

Colorado has the lowest rate while Mississippi ranks number one in the country in obesity.

While no one should make fun of fat or obese people, it would be helpful if the nutrition and wellness folks at the university would also have a table or booth every year and hand out information on the real deadly epidemic that not only hurts people’s feelings, but kills them.

It’s not thinness.

It’s obesity.