CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

CDC Report: Nearly 4 in 10 American Adults Are Now Obese

Valley News - 10/15/2017

Los Angeles Times

Americans’ obesity rates have reached a new high-water mark. Again.

In 2015 and 2016, just short of 4 in 10 American adults had a body mass index that put them in obese territory.

In addition, just under 2 in 10 American children — those between 2 and 19 years of age — now are considered obese as well.

The new measure of the nation’s weight problem, released early Friday by statisticians from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronicles dramatic increases from the nation’s obesity levels since the turn of the 21st century.

Adult obesity rates have climbed steadily from a rate of 30.5 percent in 1999-2000 to 39.8 percent in 2015-2016, the most recent period for which data were available.

That represents a 30 percent increase. Children’s rates of obesity have risen roughly 34 percent in the same period, from 13.9 percent in 1999-2000 to 18 percent in 2015-2016.

Seen against a more distant backdrop, the new figures show an even starker pattern of national weight-gain over a generation.

In the period between 1976 and 1980, the same national survey found that roughly 15 percent of adults and just 5.5 percent of children qualified as obese.

In the time that’s elapsed since Saturday Night Fever was playing in movie theaters and Ronald Reagan won the presidency, rates of obesity in the United States have nearly tripled.

The new report, from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, measures obesity according to body mass index.

That is a rough measure of fatness that takes a person’s weight (measured in kilograms) and divides it by their height (measured in meters) squared. For adults, those with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 are considered to have a “normal” weight. A BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight, and anything above 30 is deemed obese.

Obesity rates for children and teens are based on CDC growth charts that use a baseline period between 1963 and 1994.

Those with a BMI above the 85th percentile are considered overweight, and those above the 95th percentile are considered obese.

The report underscores a continuing pattern of racial and ethnic disparities when it comes to weight. Obesity rates among African-Americans and Latinos have been consistently higher than those seen in whites, and the new survey shows no change in that pattern.

In adult Latinos and non-Hispanic blacks, obesity rates for 2015-2016 were 47 percent and 46.8 percent, respectively. Some 37.9 percent of non-Hispanic white American adults were obese in the latest tally.

Among non-Hispanic Asian adults, obesity rates were at 12.9 percent.