Obesity Rates for U.S. Women and Teens are on the Rise
It is no secret that the United States is facing an obesity crisis. A recent study reported the prevalence of obesity has increased significantly; specifically among women.
Published in The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), two new studies from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that obesity rates for U.S. women and teens are on the rise. In one of the studies mentioned in the journal, about 41% of women and 35% of men are obese. However, a decade earlier, numbers were not as high – 38% of women and 34% of men were obese. Over the same amount of time, obesity rates rose from about 17% to 21%.
CDC researcher, Cynthia Ogden, reports, “The most recent data before this point showed no increase overall in youth, men or women over the previous decade. These trends are not explained by changes in age or educational levels in the population or by changes in the distribution of race-ethnic groups in the population or changes in smoking status.”
Both studies used data from a national survey of the U.S. population and researchers focused on participants’ body mass index, and weight relative to height to assess trends in obesity over time.
The CDC reports that a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy, 25 to 29.9 is overweight, 30 or above is obese and 40 or higher is morbidly obese. Almost 6 percent of men and 10 percent of women have class 3 obesity – a BMI of at least 40, with an extremely high risk of health complications due to their weight.
Some good news – obesity rates for children ages 2 to 5 dipped slightly from 6 to 11 percent.
Dr. Lili Lustig, a family medicine researcher at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, reported to the Huffington Post, “Lack of exercise is part of the problem, and so is what people eat. We have done a deplorable job of helping parents understand food as a prescription for health. If a parent does not understand the value of food choices, how can you expect their children and the next generation to have any better understanding?”
Source: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/journal.aspx
