CBS Sunday Morning examines Japan’s low obesity rate, JD Vance interview

A striking public-health gap framed CBS News Sunday Morning’s look at Japan: adult obesity there is about ten times lower than in the United States. The comparison landed against a larger warning from the World Health Organization, which says adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990 and that 16 percent of adults worldwide were living with obesity in 2022, while the CDC puts U.S. adult obesity at 40.3 percent from August 2021 through August 2023.

Rather than treating the difference as a matter of national taste, the segment pushed toward the systems behind it. Diet mattered, but so did the surrounding structure of daily life, including transit, school meals, portion sizes and preventive care. That framing made the Japan story less a lifestyle anecdote than a policy question: what happens when a country builds habits, institutions and expectations around smaller servings, more movement and earlier intervention?

Jane Pauley anchored the broadcast, which also featured Vice President JD Vance in a wide-ranging conversation with Robert Costa about faith, family and his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. The program said Vance and second lady Usha Vance are expecting their fourth child, a personal detail that adds new context to a vice president who has increasingly folded family and religion into his public identity.

The rest of the hour ranged widely. Jim Axelrod profiled Bill Mumy, now 72, whose early fame came from The Twilight Zone and Lost in Space, before he built a second career as an Emmy-nominated songwriter, touring musician and recording artist. Another segment examined the future of the Houston Astrodome, the world’s first multi-purpose domed sports stadium, which opened in 1965 and once housed both the Houston Astros and the Houston Oilers. CBS also pointed to America250’s time capsule, set to be buried in Philadelphia on July 4, 2026, and reopened in 2276, and to an art exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art featuring soccer imagery made with gum wrappers.

CBS News Sunday Morning aired Sunday at 9:00 a.m. ET and streamed at 11:00 a.m. ET, a broadcast built less around spectacle than around the institutions, habits and personal choices that shape American life.