Government statistics indicate that growing numbers of Americans are seriously overweight, and new research suggests that what some have called an "epidemic" of obesity could reverse a decades-long trend of improved life expectancy.

According to researcher David Allison, the more obese a person gets, the more risk he/she has for earlier mortality, for heard disease, for gall bladder disease, for certain forms of cancer, for diabetes, for high cholesterol, for atherosclerosis and so on....

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