Laut einer umfassenden neuen Studie, die in The Lancet veröffentlicht wurde, sind fast drei Viertel der Erwachsenen in den USA mittlerweile übergewichtig oder fettleibig. Die Studie dokumentierte, dass mehr Menschen als früher in jüngeren Jahren übergewichtig oder fettleibig werden.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/well/obesity-epidemic-america.html?unlocked_article_code=1.aE4.KyGB.F8Om1sn1gk8x&smid=url-share
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Direct link to the peer-reviewed study: [GBD 2021 US Obesity Forecasting Collaborators, National-level and state-level prevalence of overweight and obesity among children, adolescents, and adults in the USA, 1990–2021, and forecasts up to 2050, *The Lancet* (2024).](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01548-4)
* Comment: [The obesity crisis in the USA: why are there no signs of plateauing yet?](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)02467-X)
Commentary from the authors about using BMI:
> The paper defined “overweight” adults as those who were age 25 and over with a body mass index at or over 25, and “obese” adults as those with a B.M.I. at or over 30. The authors acknowledged that B.M.I. is an imperfect measure that may not capture variations in body structure across the population. But from a scientific perspective, experts said, B.M.I. is correlated with other measures of body fat and is a practical tool for studying it at a population level.
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> The authors found a steady increase in the share of people who are overweight or obese over the past three decades. The rate of obesity in particular rose steeply, doubling in adults between 1990 and 2021 to more than 40 percent — and nearly tripling, to 29 percent, among girls and women aged 15 to 24.
Maybe has something to do with ultra processed foods being way more widely available than in the past. My grandparents had home cooked food all their lives, and my parents had processed foods in adulthood. It’s only been millennials and down that have had ultra processed foods all their lives. And yes, obesity is linked to ultra processed foods. Theirs been so many people that went to eating minimally processed that lost a bunch of weight, including myself, so I know this intimately.
DISCLAIMER: Diet has a bigger effect on weight than exercise. If you comment the same argument that it’s more diet than exercise then you missed my entire point, and ignored my edit at the end of my comment.
For years it was diet but now I think inactivity has become a larger factor across the board than maybe any other time. Especially with so many people working from home.
I know on days when I have a lot of zoom meetings and a lot of work, it might hit 5:00 pm before I have 1k steps.
Couple that with schools axing nearly all after school programs that aren’t organized sports, and you get basically families across the country who might get 10k steps a day combined.
Then, add in the final kicker which is rising food prices and larger families have no choice and/or fall into the habit of choosing higher calorie density to get by.
Edit: This sure got some responses. To be clear – I am not saying everyone should start exercising and then this wouldn’t be a problem. I’m saying sustained inactivity is detrimental to endocrine system, risk of diabetes, and cardiovascular health. That in turn can lead to further inactivity, health complications, and snowball weight gain.
Don’t exercise because people will say it make you lose weight. Exercise because it make your body function better. At the very least when it functions better, you feel better, when you feel better you are more likely to seek additional beneficial activities.
Really – my only point was that diet has been a serious problem for some time now. I’m suggesting on top of that inactivity has become a rapidly rising problem.
Mostly the garbage that is considered “food”.
Half of our adult population can’t read past a sixth-grade level. Who knows what percentage is merely the newest iteration of intergenerational poverty? Hell, we’re a nation where your ZIP code is still a pretty spot-on determinant of your future wealth, health, and likelihood of going to prison.
Couple this with low-paying wages, intense cultural strife/division, and climate anxiety — anxiety which I suspect is playing a larger role in our day-to-day than what we presently understand — and I’m surprised that our obesity rates aren’t higher!
Most people don’t seem to have a good idea of how much they’re eating and especially drinking in terms of calories. It always shakes me to see grocery carts at the store filled with full sugar soda and other garbage. Parents are giving this to their children
Anecdotally, I was in the borderline obese category four years ago but now am in the borderline of just being overweight. In the past couple years I have undertaken weightlifting so I am not too concerned with a 25 BMI, though my former 30 was way too much especially considering I had five less pounds of muscle mass.
For me, I’ve had to take a hard look at eating. Sometimes I’m amazed how ‘healthy food’ is high in calories with low nutritive value. Chicken is a staple of my diet now as is mixed vegetables.
From an activity standpoint, I walk a lot more getting five million steps last year, and I cannot recommend disc golf highly enough. I’ve made friends and gotten a lot of steps while having a lot of fun
I am still working on sleep, but I average seven hours of actual sleep each night according to my Fitbit. I’d like to get this to 7.5
Finally having healthier relationships and more healthy relationships helps a lot. I realize that a lot of my binge eating floated around times where I was over tired or a bit on the depressed side. The sleep and friendships have helped this a lot.
So while a study like this can make you feel helpless, at least in my case, you can buck the trend.
Edit: part of me getting better at sleep is wearing ear plugs at night. I have found that being able to block out noise from my partner helps me to stay asleep.
My biggest downfall is sugar, so I’ve made a rule in my house that if I want a dessert or sweet snack, then I have to make it myself from scratch. Most of the time I’m too tried, so it works.
I also downsized all of my kitchen equipment to make smaller portions of everything. I cut all of my recipes in half
And lastly, keeping even moderately active does a lot to keep hunger at bay. Most people eat out of sheer boredom.
Completely unsurprised. Have been watching this happen for about the last 20 years. Watching school kids get more and more overweight, compared to my high school days in the 80’s, where there were only 2-3 what would be called “obese” kids in my class of 300. And they weren’t even THAT big.
Go to a flea market in the U.S now on a weekend. That is a real eye-opener, to the
current mass obesity phenomenon ..
We are headed for the space ships of Wall-E …
And it will just keep getting better and better now that we know who’s leading the Department of Health.
The “epiphany” I had that changed my relationship with food was to stop entirely thinking about calories, but instead, whenever I make a food choice, I ask myself “how nutrient dense is this?” , before I eat it. It turns out that the most calorie dense foods generally don’t have a ton of nutritional benefits/density. So the mindset is less about what you can’t eat, or not eating and being hungry, and more about filling up on nutritious food choices.
Cheesecake has a ton of carbs and fat, and you need those, but probably not that much for how very little else that you get: pass
Hot dogs have a good amount of protein, kinda high in fat, but perhaps combined with a bun with a lot of whole grain fiber it’s a decent meal. And if I’m hungry I can eat them until I’m full. But the side of fries has very little nutritional value, so leave that out.
Go out for Mexican food and beans are a lot of calories, but they have a lot of good stuff for you. But the rice is pretty vapid, so I taste it and then simply leave it on the plate.
Sugary drinks might be what you need if you just did a lot of physical activity, but otherwise they’re useless.
Eat as much quinoa as you want.
Skim milk is pretty nutrient dense, whole milk just adds useless amounts of fat.
Etc
Dropped weight so easily like this, and I’m never hungry. Hope maybe this helps someone else, too.
I think part of the issue is that most Americans don’t realize how little food they actually need to survive. That package of oreos you’re eating can feed a family of 4 for a whole day in caloric intake. A box of pasta is enough calories for a day and a half for 1 person.
The weirdest thing is people’s expectation of how a healthy person should look have shifted as well. In the last few years I’ve been very inactive, didn’t work out at all (which is bad, no matter how much you weight, and I will need to do better). I did reduce my portions and basically eliminated all extra sugar from my life (in coffee, for example). This brought me down to a BMI of 18.5, which is on the lower side of normal, but still normal, especially for someone who’s not working out (so my muscle mass is quite low, which would increase this count quite a bit, my body fat is instead quite healthy – basically I just need to work out a bit).
People act like I’m basically starving myself when they see me. They say I should eat more, I tell them I feel good and energetic and healthy, they tend to disagree. I even got told this by people who were actually underweight themselves, just based on their perception of what the average person actually looks like out there.
And..this is not in the USA. This is northern italy (where only 40% of people are overweight, and about 11% are obese). I can’t imagine how the perception of others, and self perception itself, would be completely nuts in the US, which would make the issue quite hard to fix as these people become culturally harder to reach.
Go walk around Disneyland. It’s like 99% over weight people. So this is not surprising to read
That’s what happens when the majority of your population is completely reliant on cars, walk less than 3000 steps per day, have poor nutrition outlooks and live mostly sedentary life styles outside of work.
I went to the doctors. They said I was obese. They said it very nonchalantly and kind of just didn’t care. Went back in for a checkup and they were surprised I lost weight and asked if it was intentional. I told them yeah. It’s like they didn’t expect someone would actually start making an effort to lose weight after being told they are obese. I honestly think doctors have stopped really caring or trying to convince people to lose weight because a lot of people don’t bother and can get sensitive.
We were just in Disney World. The amount of obese children we saw was really upsetting. Not a little chunky but obese! That honestly should be considered child abuse.
That’s why we have RFK Jr!
It’s going to be no vaccines, no evidence based medicine, and deregulated food inspections. IOW… chronic diseases and parasites for everyone!
You’re gonna trim down America! Your waistline AND your life expectancy.
Republicans states are the fattest states.
California has one of the lowest rates.
I was at an elementary school crossing just when the kids were let out of school. While waiting, I couldn’t believe how obese some of these kids were. I don’t mean a little overweight. Some of them looked like freaking adults.