Jess asked Daniel Schulof:

In your book you describe America’s canine obesity problem as an “epidemic.” Why is that?

Daniel Schulof The American Medical Association considers obesity a disease. And it isn’t hard to see why. It is a condition that compromises all manner of vital bodily functions, it has direct pathophysiological ties to an assortment of deadly comorbidities, and it shortens expected lifespan.

And all this is true for canine obesity too. A landmark study published in 2002 showed that moderately overweight dogs tend to die much, much younger than their leaner counterparts. Being just moderately overweight is deadlier for a dog than a lifetime of smoking is for a human being. Obesity is tied to all sorts of common canine diseases, notably including cancer, the most common cause of death for dogs in the United States today.

And given how common canine obesity is—depending on which researcher you ask, one-third to one-half of the more than seventy million dogs in America today are overweight or obese—we’re fully justified in calling it an epidemic.

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