North America

Obesity has long been a problem in North America, especially in the United States. Although specific data have only been collected in recent times, of the 10 largest people for whom their “peak” weight is known—most from the 20th century—eight were from the United States, one from Mexico, and the other, Mohamed Naaman, being from Kenya. Of the 10 next largest people, one was from the United Kingdom, with all the others being from the United States.

In 2007, the United States had one of the highest rates of obesity in the world, with its occurrence in the adult population doubling between 1980 and 2002, and tripling in children during the same period. In 2003–04, children (aged 2–19) had very high levels of obesity, with 17.1 percent of them found to be overweight, and for adults (aged 20 and over), 32.3 percent were also found to have been overweight.

In the Native-American population in the pre-Columbian era, there was little obesity. Many of the tribes of North America, because of their active lifestyle, had few people who were even overweight, let alone obese. However, there was clearly a problem in nonnomadic societies, such as the Aztecs who lived in modern-day Mexico. Their general beliefs included a view that obesity was an affliction from which [Page 509]some gods suffered. For people living in Teotihuacán, the Aztec capital, and elsewhere in their empire, the Aztecs developed an extensive vocabulary relating to overweight in different parts of the body. The term quechtzotzol referred to people who were “flabby” and had a double chin; puchquiyotl referred to people who were also “flabby” with their fat distributed widely around their body; cotztzotzol referred to people who had fat calves; eltzotzolli referred to people who had fatty tissue across their chests; and ititzotzolli referred to people who had larger stomachs.

It was not long after the European settlers arrived in North America that obesity started to become a problem with some people. This became more noticeable as diet improved and the level of exercise declined. Although there are no instances of obesity among the Pilgrim Fathers, Boston, Lincolnshire, the place from where many of them came, has the highest rate of obesity in Britain, with one in three residents now being regarded as clinically obese.

John Ratcliffe, the captain of the Discovery that sailed to Virginia in 1607, and the second president of the colony, is often portrayed as overweight. Soon after U.S. independence, in 1799, John and Mary Darden of Rich Square, North Carolina, had a son, Mills, who became a farmer and then is believed to have established a saloon. In about 1830, he moved to Henderson County, Tennessee, and there, some local villagers claimed that they measured his weight by testing him sitting on a one-horse cart which operated with springs, and seeing how far the springs were depressed. They then put weights on the empty cart until it reached the same level, thus ascertaining Darden's weight. The claim was that he was 7 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 1,020 pounds (463 kilograms), making him 30 percent taller and six times heavier than the average American at the start of the 21st century. He died in Lexington, Tennessee, on January 23, 1857; no photograph of him is known to survive. His wife was said to have weighed 98 pounds and she died in 1837 after bearing him either three or five children.

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