AMERICA'S WAISTLINE
America's fat crisis has been a long time coming. Diet books have been selling briskly for decades, and Richard Simmons' fitness infomercials from the '80s seem positively retro. Despite a national obsession with losing weight, however, we have continued to put on pounds. Today one-third of Americans are not just overweight but obese. That's why the issue got more attention in 2004 than ever before from health experts, government agencies and the media--including Time and abc News, which jointly sponsored a conference on obesity in May. And it's why I've decided--on my own authority--to declare 2004 the Year of...