Obesity Rate in US Women Reaches 40 Percent – Study

Washington (PNA/Xinhua) — The obesity problem among US women is getting much worse, with a new study released Tuesday by government researchers showing that over 40 percent of American women are obese.

However, the prevalence of obesity among US men has stayed steadily at about 35 percent for about a decade, said the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) .

Meanwhile, the prevalence of obesity among US children and adolescents aged two to 19 years old was 17 percent, according a separate study published in the same US medical journal.

“The news is neither good nor surprising,” JAMA’s deputy editor Jody Zylke and editor in chief Howard Bauchner wrote in an editorial commenting on the two studies.

“The obesity epidemic in the United States is now three decades old, and huge investments have been made in research, clinical care, and development of various programs to counteract obesity. However, few data suggest the epidemic is diminishing,” they said.

In the first study, researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at obesity data from 2,638 adult men and 2,817 women collected by a national survey during 2013 and 2014, the most recent two years available, and data from 21,013 participants in previous surveys from 2005 through 2012.

People with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more is considered obese. A BMI of 40 or more is considered severely obese. BMI is calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared.

The results showed that for the years 2013-2014, the overall prevalence of obesity was 38 percent; among men, it was 35 percent; and among women, it was 40 percent.

The corresponding prevalence of severe obesity overall was 7.7 percent; among men, it was 5.5 percent; and among women, it was 9.9 percent.

Analyses of changes over the decade from 2005 through 2014 showed significant increasing linear trends among women for overall obesity and for severe obesity but not among men.

A separate CDC study looked specifically at trends among children and adolescents, and found over the last 25 years, the prevalence has decreased in children age two to five years, leveled off in children six to 11 years, and increased among adolescents 12 to 19 years of age.

Despite great effort to fight the obesity epidemic, the new findings “certainly do not suggest much success” has been achieved, Zylke and Bauchner said.

“More immediate solutions are needed,” they said. “Perhaps it is time for an entirely different approach, one that emphasizes collaboration with the food and restaurant industries that are in part responsible for putting food on dinner tables.” (PNA/Xinhua) JMC/EBP