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The Obesity Epidemic: New Study Reveals What Demographics Are Most At Risk

Maksymiv Iurii - stock.adobe.com - illustrative purpose only, not the actual person

Since 1999, the prevalence of obesity in the United States has increased by over ten percent. Now, about forty-one percent of American adults are obese, according to the CDC.

And researchers from Brigham Young University recently published a new study in hopes of revealing essential data that can help prevent the obesity epidemic from progressing.

The study was published in the Journal of Obesity and analyzed over thirteen thousand and eight hundred U.S. adults who were randomly selected through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

The team used NHANES data to analyze how U.S. adults’ weight changed over a ten-year period.

The study revealed that over half of adults gain five percent or more of their body weight in that time. Moreover, a third of the participants gained ten percent or more weight, while a fifth gained twenty percent or more.

Larry Tucker, the study’s lead author, described how this study underscored the severity of obesity in the U.S.

“The U.S. obesity epidemic is not slowing down. Without question, ten-year weight gain is a serious problem within the U.S. adult population,” Tucker said.

Other findings included how weight gain differs between genders and ages.

First, the researchers found that women gained two times as much weight over the ten years than men did.

Maksymiv Iurii – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purpose only, not the actual person

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