I Ain't Heavy, I'm His Brother

This is one of those bad-news, worse-news stories. A new Gallup survey finds 40 percent of Americans confessing they’re overweight—6 percent “very overweight” and 34 percent “somewhat” so. As alarming as those numbers may sound, they understate the problem. Indeed, they indicate millions of Americans have passed into denial about the matter.Calculating the Body Mass Index scores of respondents to an earlier survey (which asked people to give their height and weight), Gallup calculated that 57 percent were overweight, including 19 percent who were obese.