A government-funded study has determined that if current trends continue, one-hundred-percent of Americans will be fat within 40 years. The study, out of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, determined that by 2030, 86 percent of Americans will be overweight and 56 percent obese, and by 2048, it’s all of us — figuratively speaking.

Dr. Lan Liang, one of the researchers, said, “Genetically and physiologically, it should be impossible for all U.S. adults to become overweight, [but if the trends of the past 30 years persist] that is the direction we’re going.” She also notes that associated health-care costs will balloon exponentially, doubling each decade until reaching about $957 billion by 2030.

Already, two-thirds of the population is overweight, with some segments of the population in even worse shape. For instance, 78 percent of African American women are overweight or obese now, with projections indicating a 96% overweight incidence in this population by 2030.

Obviously, the weight issue isn’t merely a health concern: it’s become a major crisis, the plague of our time. And addressing this crisis by admonishing us to eat better and exercise more just isn’t working; we keep getting fatter. As Dr. Liang says, “It really needs to be more than an individual effort. It needs to be a societal effort.”

But wait! It seems a simple solution might be at hand. Scientists have developed a pill that replaces the need for exercise. According to an article in Cell, mice that took the pill lost body fat and increased endurance significantly. In fact, after four weeks of taking the pills, the little rodents could run about 44 percent farther and 23 percent longer than untreated mice. And if they did exercise, the pill helped them to run 68 percent longer and 70 percent farther than exercising mice who were drug-free.

“We have exercise in a pill,” said study director Ron Evans of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. “With no exercise, you can take a drug and chemically mimic it.”

Looks like we might finally be able to have our cake and eat it too — while sitting in front of our flat screen TVs…without budging. You know, when you think about it, it does make sense in some perverse kind of way. If we’re actually heading towards 100% overweight, then taking pills that change our genetic coding (as long as we don’t worry about possible side effects) might be just what the doctor ordered. Hey, and why even worry about side effects — there certainly will be another pill to handle those in short order. It’s incredible. From a world of fatties to a world where everyone — even the women — look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You gotta love it.

:hc