Traveling in the Age of Obesity
Weighty Issues
As the CoVid-19 pandemic continues to rage across the world, a secondary but no less deadly pandemic continues to grow — no pun intended. This secondary pandemic has been going on much longer, kills many more but has not captured the headlines as dramatically.
Obesity kills 2.8 million people worldwide each year. At the time of this writing, obesity deaths are 10 times more than the US death toll from Covid-19 over the past 9 months.
While a vaccine may be on the horizon for CoVid-19 — Pfizer announced a 90% effective vaccine this morning — no such vaccine has been found for obesity. As schedules get busier, jobs become more sedentary, and diets continue to Westernize, obesity will affect more and more of the world’s population.
We could spend days and many pages discussing the underlying issues and potential treatments, reactions, and policies to combat the obesity epidemic. In this article, however, I want to speak to how those dealing with obesity can continue to enjoy the gift of travel.
For many, the experience of travel is one of great excitement and, frequently, spontaneity. Nothing could be further from the truth for about 30% of the American population. The thought of getting on a plane — or even to the terminal — can be terror-invoking.
