Half of US adults will be obese by 2030 – study

‘Tobacco use drop in men’

By Marilynn Marchione

There’s no way to sugarcoat this news: Nearly half of American adults will be obese within a decade and one-quarter will be severely so, a new report predicts.

It corrects for a weakness in previous estimates that may have made the problem seem not as big as it really is. Those estimates often relied on national health surveys and people tend to understate their weight in those.

The new work used a decadeslong federal study in which weight was measured to get a more accurate picture of trends and to project into the future.

“It’s alarming,” said a nutrition expert with no role in the study, Dr Lawrence Appel of Johns Hopkins University. “We’re going to have some pretty awful problems” medically and financially because so many people weigh too much, he said.

The New England Journal of Medicine published the study Wednesday. It was led by scientists at Harvard and George Washington universities.

Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and other health problems. It’s gauged by body mass index, or BMI, a measure of weight relative to height. Underweight or normal is a BMI under 25; overweight is 25 to 30, moderately obese is 30 to 35 and severely obese is 35 or over.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 40% of US adults are obese.

The new research predicts that by 2030, about 49% of US adults will be obese. In 29 states, more than half will be.

About 24% will have severe obesity, which is “poised to become as prevalent as overall obesity was in the 1990s,” the authors write.

Severe obesity will become the most common weight category among women (28%), blacks (32%) and low-income adults (32%).

It may seem like a contradiction, but often people who can least afford food weigh the most. Severe obesity will be the most common weight category in 44 states where average annual household income is under $20,000, but in only one state where income is over $50,000.

The study was funded by the JPB Foundation, which focuses on poverty and societal problems.

Despite this bad news, there have been some other hopeful signs. In May, the CDC reported that even though obesity rates were rising, new diabetes cases are declining, suggesting progress on recognizing and treating early signs of the disease.

In June, the CDC reported declining obesity rates among preschoolers on government food aid. Obesity among these young children fell from 16% in 2010 to around 14% in 2016.

Cancer

Tobacco: Worldwide, the number of men using traditional tobacco products has finally started to decline, health officials said Thursday.

Four out of five tobacco users globally are men, so declines among males “mark a turning point in the fight against tobacco,” Dr Tedros

Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said in a statement.

The agency’s new report covers an array of tobacco use, including cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco. But the WHO did not count electronic cigarettes as tobacco products, and officials could not say what impact the growing popularity of vaping devices has had in diverting people from traditional smoking.

WHO officials said they plan to release a report on e-cigarette use early next year.

Researchers previously reported declines in male and female smoking rates internationally, but the drop wasn’t enough to offset the growth in world population. The number of female tobacco users did shrink since 2000, but the number of male tobacco users continued to edge up, bringing the total to more than 1.3 billion people.

That appears to have changed last year, the agency said. And the WHO now estimates the number of male tobacco users will decline by more than 1 million next year and by 5 million by 2025.

The agency said the decline is driven mainly by a decrease in the number of males who exclusively use smokeless tobacco.

The WHO report found that countries in southeast Asia had the world’s highest rates of tobacco use – 45% among males and females age 15 and older. But that percentage also is projected to decline, officials said.

In a call with reporters, the WHO’s Dr Alison Commar noted that smokeless tobacco use was once common among all women in India and some other Asian countries, but lately it’s mainly seen only in older women.

“It seems to be a dying tradition,” she said.

Also:

BISMARCK, ND: North Dakota’s high school students are drinking less and using less tobacco, but more young people are having extended periods of feeling sad or hopeless, according to results of a survey about their health behavior released Monday.

State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler said the survey showed fewer high school students reported being bullied at school, either electronically or personally.

Earlier this year, lawmakers extended the reach of a law intended to discourage bullying, and approved an administrative reorganization of the Department of Human Services’ regional centers to improve the availability of services for students.

While some trends are moving in the right direction, others are not, Baesler said.

“But an increased percentage of students who had extended periods of feeling sad or hopeless, seriously considered suicide, or the 13% of the survey’s respondents who had attempted suicide should cause us all to be gravely concerned,” Baesler said.

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey was developed in 1990 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is given in the spring of odd-numbered years to students in grades 7-8 and 9-12. (AP)