Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are considered overweight or obese, according to new research published Thursday from The Lancet.
The research points to a substantial increase in overweight and obese adults in the last 30 years as well as an especially large increase in adolescents aged 5-24, with forecasts showing little room for improvement leading up to 2050.
In 2021, 75 percent of adults were considered overweight or obese, and, factoring in how weight issues in adolescents rarely resolve, research predicts that number with rise to 80 percent, or about 260 million Americans.
The Lancet paper defined “obese” adults as those with a B.M.I. at or over 30 and “overweight” adults as those who were age 25 and over with a body mass index at or over 25. While B.M.I. is not a perfect measure for capturing variations in body structure across the population, experts say it is still the best correlated measure for body fat at a population level.
Obesity is higher across gender and age groups in southern and Midwest states, specifically Mississippi, West Virginia and Iowa, the paper found.
“I would consider it an epidemic,” Marie Ng, who is an affiliate associate professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a co-author of the new paper, told the New York Times.
Researchers in the paper called on legislators to take action to break the pattern, referencing the World Health Organization’s 2013-2020 Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases. They also reference existing investments from the US Department of Agriculture, the Center for Disease Control and the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research, but say these efforts have been insufficient in bending the curve.
Despite the booming obesity medication market, researchers say the drugs are not widely accessible to all affected populations, and the authors write those clinical treatments “should not be viewed as a cure for the obesity epidemic.”
The release of the research comes after President-elect Trump this week nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his Health and Human Services secretary. Kennedy has pointed to rising obesity as a symptom of what he calls a failing public health ecosystem, but argues that healthier lifestyles are a better solution than weight loss drugs.
The paper recommends interventions that target driving factors in obesity: excessive caloric intake, sedentary lifestyles, and complex socio-economic, cultural, and commercial factors, exacerbated by issues like as urbanization, food industry practices, and systemic inequalities.
They call on the government to extend investments into industry, specifically in education, social welfare, food and agricultural systems, and marketing campaigns at the national and community level.