PHONE SURVEY SEEKS REASON SOME ARE OBESE

What do you eat? How much do you eat? How is it prepared? How often do you exercise?

These are just some of the questions being asked of residents across the state in a Department of Health study looking at why one in three Missourians is overweight.

Bernard Malone of the Missouri Department of Health said 35.6 percent of Missourians are overweight or obese, and those numbers are growing.

If present trends continue, more than 45 percent of Missouri's population will be overweight by 2010, state health department figures show.

The study will be based on telephone surveys of Missouri adults, who will be asked about their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs concerning diet, exercise and obesity.

Malone, who directs the chronic disease prevention and health promotion division, said the health department is interested in the obesity of Missourians because those who are overweight are at increased risk for a number of chronic diseases.

These include heart disease, several types of cancer, diabetes and hypertension, which can lead to stroke.

"This is more than just that people who maintain their ideal body weight look better and feel better," Malone said. "Being obese can put you at risk for severe complications of diseases."

As a certified diabetes educator at Southeast Missouri Hospital, registered dietitian Mary Etta Dunaway sees these complications.

"Diabetes is at epidemic proportions," Dunaway said. Many of these cases are directly related to the patients' obesity.

"You can prevent many cases of diabetes by controlling weight," Dunaway said, but controlling their weight isn't easy for many people.

So the study is looking at more than just how much people weigh, Malone said. It will look at some of the risk factors that lead to obesity with the intention of implementing programs that could stop the trend toward obesity.

These risk factors include how often people eat, what they eat, how many servings of fruits and vegetables they eat in a day, how people prepare their food, how often they eat fast food.

The study also will look at the level and regularity of physical activity, as well as access to walking trails and other places to exercise.

Sandy Braswell, assistant manager of the wellness department at St. Francis Medical Center, said people are more educated about the need to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, that hasn't translated into people leading a more healthy lifestyle.

People drive instead of walk, children watch TV instead of playing outside, people grab fast food instead of preparing a healthy meal.

When this leads to extra pounds, people look for a quick fix, Braswell said.

"People are still searching for a magic way of losing weight," Dunaway said. In her 20 years as a dietitian, she's seen many weight loss products come and go, but she hasn't seen any of them live up to their promises of easy weight loss.

Braswell said it is better to make sensible choices and eat in moderation than try fad diets that place extreme limits on what you eat.

"It's better to have a diet you can live with for a lifetime than a fad diet you'll be on three weeks," she said. "Because after those three weeks, if you go back to eating the way you did, you'll gain all that weight back."

Because so many people don't eat right, staying active is even more important, Dunaway said.

"When you are not eating right, it's even more important to work it off," Dunaway said.

This is true for children, as well as adults.

"One of the things we are concerned about nationally is an increase in overweight kids," Malone said.

Problems that can lead to obese children include lack of physical activity, a high-calorie diet, sedentary lifestyles and reductions in physical education classes.

The intent of the health department study is to pinpoint the nature of such problems, then develop intervention programs, Malone said.

"Once we know the prevalence of risk behaviors, we can embark on programs to reduce the risk," Malone said. "It may be we need to educate health providers to get them to put more emphasis on diet and exercise."

Or, he said, the need could be more walking tracks or providing a safe environments for people to get out and participate in exercise programs.

"Perhaps we need to work more closely with schools to increase the amount of time children spend in PE classes," Malone said.

It takes 25 to 30 minutes to take the survey, which consists of 100 to 120 questions, depending on follow up questions.