Obesity still going strong in U.S., 2 studies show

How do government agencies, private foundations, industry groups and professional societies squander hundreds of millions of dollars? By trying to fight America’s obesity epidemic.

Two new studies show that the best efforts of all these players — as well as schools, churches and health care providers — have largely failed to keep most Americans from getting fatter.

One report finds that 35 percent of men and 40 percent of women were obese as of 2014, the most recent year for which data were available. The other says that 17 percent of children and teens were obese, including nearly 6 percent who were morbidly obese.

Both studies appeared in Tuesday’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The news is neither good nor surprising,” two of the journal’s top editors wrote in an editorial. But, they added, the findings serve as a powerful reminder of “the unrelenting challenge of obesity.”

Both studies are based on data collected as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Year after year, trained professionals measure the height and weight of thousands of volunteers from around the country. Those measurements are used to compute body mass index, an imperfect but useful measure of health that is highly correlated with obesity. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered “normal.” People in the 25 to 29.9 range are classified as “overweight,” and anyone above 30 is “obese.”

Based on data from 2,638 men and 2,817 women, researchers from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics calculated that 38 percent of American adults were obese as of 2014, up from 34 percent in 2006. The prevalence of obesity increased among women during that period, but not among men.

The odds of being obese varied with age. The researchers found that 41 percent of adults in their 40s and 50s were obese, compared with 34 percent of adults in their 20s and 30s and 39 percent of adults age 60 and older.

There were also differences based on race and ethnicity. At one end of the spectrum were Asian-Americans, 13 percent of whom were obese. At the other end were African-Americans, 48 percent of whom were obese. In between were Latinos (43 percent) and whites (36 percent).

In another group of calculations, the researchers determined that 5.5 percent of men and 9.9 percent of women were morbidly obese, with a BMI over 40.

The definitions are different for children and teens. Those who have a BMI at or above the 95th percentile for kids of the same age and gender on the CDC’s growth charts are considered obese; if their BMI is at least 20 percent higher than that cut-off, they are counted as morbidly obese. The younger the child, the lower the risk of obesity, according to a second study by the same researchers and two additional CDC colleagues. For instance, 9 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 5 were obese, compared with 18 percent of kids between the ages of 6 and 11 and 21 percent of children ages 12 to 19. The odds of obesity were 34 percent higher for black children than white children, and 48 percent higher for Latino children, the researchers found. Asian-American children were 43 percent less likely than whites to be obese.

Parents’ education also seems to play a role. Compared to kids living in homes headed by someone who attended or graduated from college, those whose parent or guardian had dropped out of high school were 41 percent more likely to be obese, and those whose parent or guardian had only a high school degree were 61 percent more likely to be obese.

Looking back all the way to 1988, the researchers found that the prevalence of obesity among the youngest group of kids rose until 2004, then began to decrease. It kept rising among 6- to 11-year-olds until 2008 before leveling off. For teens, the prevalence of obesity rose continuously for 26 years.