About 40% of US adults are obese, government survey finds

Authored by apnews.com and submitted by tenders74

About 40% of US adults are obese, government survey finds

FILE - In this Jan. 20, 2010 file photo, a subject's waist is measured during an obesity prevention study in Chicago. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study released on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020, the U.S. obesity rate continues to rise, with an especially large jump in the ranks of people who are severely obese. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — About 4 in 10 American adults are obese, and nearly 1 in 10 is severely so, government researchers said Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings come from a 2017-18 health survey that measures height and weight. More than 5,000 U.S. adults took part.

The survey found that the obesity rate was 42% — higher than the 40% found in a similar 2015-16 study. The severe obesity rate was more than 9% in the new survey, up from the 8% figure in the previous one.

Those increases aren’t considered statistically significant: The survey numbers are small enough that there’s a mathematical chance the rates didn’t truly rise.

But it’s clear that adult obesity rates are trending up, said the CDC’s Cynthia Ogden, one of the report’s authors.

A half-century ago, about 1 in 100 American adults were severely obese. Now it’s 10 times more common.

The obesity rate has risen about 40% in the last two decades.

The findings suggest that more Americans will get diabetes, heart disease and cancer, said Dr. William Dietz, a George Washington University obesity expert.

It also will be increasingly difficult for doctors to care for so many severely obese people, Dietz said. He has estimated that on average, every primary care doctor treating adults has about 100 severely obese patients.

“How’s a provider going to do that? Severe obesity really requires very intensive therapy,” he said.

The CDC did not report new obesity numbers for kids and teens. That may come out later this year, Ogden said. In 2015-16, 18.5% of kids and teens were obese and just under 6% were severely obese.

Dietz faulted the government for not pushing for more measures to promote physical activity and better eating. Building more sidewalks and passing a national tax on sugary beverages could make a big difference, he said.

Obesity — which means not merely overweight, but seriously overweight — is considered one of the nation’s leading public health problems.

It is measured by the body mass index, or BMI, a figure calculated from a person’s weight and height. A BMI of 25 or greater is considered overweight, a BMI of 30 and above is obese, and a BMI of 40 or above is severely obese.

A person who is 5-foot-4, the average height for U.S. women, is considered obese at a weight of 174 pounds and severely obese above 232 pounds. A person who is 5-foot-9, about the average height for men, is deemed obese at 203 pounds and severely obese at 270.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

hononononoh on February 27th, 2020 at 15:20 UTC »

General practice physician in the US here. I was mentally prepared to see lots of elevated weight, waistline, blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol (together called “metabolic syndrome”). What I was not prepared for, and I find truly disturbing, is how common non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NASH) has become in this country. I’d say at least half of my obese patients had the the profile of elevated liver enzymes typical of NASH when I first tested them. Even worse at least 20~25% of non-obese but not-optimally-healthy adults I’ve tested have this lab pattern also. Liver damage takes a real toll on quality of life and life expectancy, and really curtails the options for meds, since most medicines are processed by the liver.

Stay in shape and lay off the fast food, fellow Americans, even if you’re not fat.

blaze_szh on February 27th, 2020 at 15:15 UTC »

In Mexico we have kind of the same issue and that has been causing us a lot of problems. For example, our health system spends a lot of money trying to cover all the diabetes, high arterial pressure, high cholesterol, etc. However the biggest problem is that we (and for what I know of the usa) Is that we have a culture of "fixing" our health and no preventing disease. Only 40% of Mexican excersie and the availability of healthy food is almost no existent. We have kinda adopted the American diet with fast food but also have our own (very delicious) traditional high fat and carbohydrates food (I'm looking at you tamales, I mean 1/5 of you is equal in kcal to a slice a bread!!)

Jieeimuzu on February 27th, 2020 at 14:30 UTC »

I came across a chart someone posted the other day where it shows BMI of america from 1960 to 2019, Saved it becasue it shows the extent and shock of it all. Heres a link to it.

Images created by u/k1next credit should Deffo go to him for this interesting graph 🙂

https://imgur.com/ilP9nTd

Kinda mad to think that nearly 50% of america is classed as obease, nearly 80% being classed as overweight

Just since it's appeared a lot, BMI isn't a good metric to work on individual weight but can good for use on populus to get an idea of peoples weight groups, some people draw health conclusions from this. For a better idea of individual health, obviously see a health professional but Body Fat Percentage is a good metric apparently 🙂

Heres the updated graph: https://i.redd.it/jhdxstclp2j41.png