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United States Medicine

Three-Quarters of US Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese 303

An anonymous reader shares a report: Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, according to a sweeping new study. The findings have wide-reaching implications for the nation's health and medical costs as it faces a growing burden of weight-related diseases.

The study reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 -- when just over half of adults were overweight or obese -- and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past. Both conditions can raise the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, and shorten life expectancy.

The study's authors documented increases in the rates of overweight and obesity across ages. They were particularly alarmed by the steep rise among children, more than one in three of whom are now overweight or obese. Without aggressive intervention, they forecast, the number of overweight and obese people will continue to go up -- reaching nearly 260 million people in 2050.
Further reading: Adipose tissue retains an epigenetic memory of obesity after weight loss.
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Three-Quarters of US Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese

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  • There goes my karma (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Talon0ne ( 10115958 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @11:19AM (#64970719)

    Maybe we should make it ok to tease fat kids again? Or at least go back to the 80's concept that being fat was undesirable. Crazy, I know, but being incredibly overweight is actually a bad thing.

    • Nah, have some of the latest ridiculousness to come out of academia -- fat studies. How Blackness intersects with Fatness.

      Folks, you can't make this shit up. A whole line of study made up just like Black Studies or Genders Studies.

      https://www.thecentersquare.co... [thecentersquare.com]

      This is where your $ goes to, America. Useless shit like this.

      This is what academia does. Find the most ridiculous niche and build a whole career around it.

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @11:50AM (#64970819)
      How about we just let them play outside without the threat of the parents being arrested for it?
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by The-Ixian ( 168184 )

      How about, crazy though this sounds, we just let people have their own relationship with their body and respect their choices even though they may be different than ours....

      The idea that you give two craps about anyone else's state of health is laughable. If that were the case, you would be just as irate about a thin person who eats garbage.

      Just let people live their lives. They don't need anyone to tell them how to live.

      • by ryanw ( 131814 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @01:30PM (#64971113)

        How about, crazy though this sounds, we just let people have their own relationship with their body and respect their choices even though they may be different than ours....

        The idea that you give two craps about anyone else's state of health is laughable. If that were the case, you would be just as irate about a thin person who eats garbage.

        Just let people live their lives. They don't need anyone to tell them how to live.

        Recent studies indicate that approximately 77% of young Americans are ineligible for military service, with obesity being a leading disqualifier. Who are we going to have defend us if our political leaders get us into world war 3? Also as people are more obese they have shorter lifespans, quality of life issues not able to participate in activities they might want to, depression, amongst many other issues. All of these things compound. Maybe you don't care, but the solution is actually quite simple to put different food in their mouths, but the resistance is deep.

        Why do we care? The more obese we are as a society there are huge implications. Shorter life spans, health care costs increase, more susceptible to disease like Covid that basically targeted overweight people. People freak out that government is going to take away social security or Medicare, but if our population lifespan changes, or people can't work and on living off the government pay checks, then guess what happens to social security and Medicare?

        People are not actually eating whatever they want. People are eating what's around them, what's readily available, or what "feels good" like a drug. To eat Doritos, people aren't growing potatoes in their gardens, preparing them, and slicing them up, baking or deep frying them, coating them with flavoring just to eat them. If they were going to go through all that hassle they probably would just make something else and it would be significantly more healthy.

        Simple tweaks to our diet can be profound. I've seen it first hand. Eating different foods I lost a lot of weight. Working out helped some, but until I changed my diet my body was still obese.

        • approximately 77% of young Americans are ineligible for military service

          Wait, I can get out of the next military draft by...guzzling Mountain Dew and eating Doritos? Much easier and more fun than going to Canada!

        • I get that there are health concerns. That is not my point.

          My point is that people get to make unhealthy decisions.

          Yes, we should help people who seek help. Yes, we should incentivize good eating habits. No, we should not judge someone based on their body size.

          • The GP listed several very real implications of the obesity epidemic in this country and you're more concerned with feelings rather than responding to any of them. Should we let society (77 fucking percent!) continue to kill itself with food and say nothing at all because we might appear judgmental? Fuck, we're doomed.

            Yes, we should incentivize good eating habits.

            We should disincentivize poor eating habits, to be honest.

      • That's great until we have to pay for their non-permanent surgeries, Wegovy or other drugs du jour. We're asked to be responsible for our own life choices, so...
      • by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @02:41PM (#64971357)

        Just let people live their lives. They don't need anyone to tell them how to live.

        HAHAHAHAHA says Coke who spent over $5 billion advertising sugary drinks (globally), and food advertisers who spent $660 million in just one month (December 2022) on promoting sugary, processed, salty foods in just the U.S., and alcohol companies who spent over $8 billion advertising their products in just 2023 alone....companies that produce and sell and market and profit off unhealthy products seem to have no problem telling people how to live.

        But, somehow, if I even MENTION that it is unhealthy to be overweight and guzzle alcohol starting at 6 AM because, hey, it's tailgating for the big game, and somehow I'M the bad guy who needs to mind MY OWN BUSINESS?

    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @01:04PM (#64971047) Homepage

      Maybe we should make it ok to tease fat kids again?

      Now that's just not fuckin' fair. Kids don't get to choose what sort of crap their parents fill the fridge and pantry with, so it's not their fault when they end up rotund.
      It's not that the kids are lazy and not getting enough exercise, because it takes a ridiculous amount of physical activity to burn off all the calories from an unhealthy diet. The human body is quite fuel efficient.

      If you want to make fun of the parents, however, have at it.

    • And we need to remove sweatpants and elastic waistbands from all future clothing. I'm convinced that's contributing.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Has berating people for their weight ever worked? Seems like we have been trying that since forever and it has never been an effective weight loss "treatment".

      It's obviously an environment factor. Other countries have not had this issue, until they adopted the US lifestyle, particularly ultra processed high fat foods and lack of time/money to make healthier choices.

      Because it's America, instead of stopping the predatory food industry and improving working conditions to give people a better work/life balance

  • That this happens to be roughly the same proportion of Americans that lack quality access to transportation infrastructure. When every trip is a car trip, of course people don't get exercise.
    • Funny, I used my car -- a gasser -- to go to the store, buy me a weights set, and bring it home. I fit a 6 ft barbell into a mini.

      Mehtinks you place way too much blame on the instrument (the car) and not the people who own them.

      Oh, I should just live in a city and go to a gym full of gym rats, pilates addicts, and everyone judging you. Fuck that.

      Can you imagine bringing home a 6 ft barbell and 135 pounds of iron plates in a bus? Train? You make me laugh.

      • I am pretty confident if you had to carry that barbell home you would have got more exercise. Its not about exceptions, its about if life makes you do exercise as part of living well you will get exercise. If you force people to walk 30 minutes to work then they will get 1 hour of exercise every work day. Sure SOME people will lift weights in that time but most people won't and just sleep in an extra half hour. The thing is we are talking in general not finding examples that are exceptions to normal human b

      • by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @12:53PM (#64971011)
        Driving everywhere isn't the only reason but you'll see a much lower occurrence of morbid obesity in urban areas that require more walking. I visited a friend in NYC recently. They owned a car but driving and parking in the city is a hassle so we took light rail most of the time. Each day i would estimate walking 3 to 4 miles max. I live in a suburb and walk less than a mile per day for normal routines.

        It adds up.
    • by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Realistically exercise helps, but diet is 90% of the equation. Not that diets are easy, but it's a lot easier to control your calorie intake than get out and burn off the equivalent number of calories. Also, this is a one-sided story. Obesity rates have been falling recently [cbsnews.com], likely due to Ozempic.
  • I know how! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @11:27AM (#64970747)
    Telling people to lose weight and exercise hasn't accomplished its goal for the past 50 years. Clearly we just need to keep harping at them, and they'll lose weight!
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      It worked for smoking. The number of people who smoke has plummeted over the decades [gallup.com] through continual warnings of its dangers.

      Just keep calling people fat. Eventually they'll get the hint.
      • Re:I know how! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DaFallus ( 805248 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @12:43PM (#64970991)

        It worked for smoking. The number of people who smoke has plummeted over the decades [gallup.com] through continual warnings of its dangers. Just keep calling people fat. Eventually they'll get the hint.

        It probably has more to do with banning smoking in more places, more employers screening for nicotine usage, and the ever increasing price of a pack of cigarettes. 20 years ago a pack was like $3 and these days its at least $10.

        • by labnet ( 457441 )

          Try Australia. $61 per pack of 30. (About USD40)

        • It probably has more to do with banning smoking in more places, more employers screening for nicotine usage, and the ever increasing price of a pack of cigarettes. 20 years ago a pack was like $3 and these days its at least $10.

          Just put a high tax on HFCS and watch the lardarses scramble to figure out if water is safe to drink from the tap when they can't afford their 5L of coke every day.

      • by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Or like drunk people being refused drinks in bars, maybe fast food joints should refuse to serve fat people ? Hmmm...
  • And foods rich in carbohydrates & sugars were scarce and hard to come by, so the human body evolved to store those energy sources as fat to be burned later when needed, along comes modern civilization and mechanized agriculture that made an over supply of those resources so naturally people will get overweight much easier, people need to put down the fork and get more exercisej
  • MAHA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 25, 2024 @11:29AM (#64970753)

    Can we please start by banning known unhealthy ingredients?
    https://legalinsurrection.com/... [legalinsurrection.com]

    The European and Asian nations don't allow much of the crap permitted in American foods because they are unhealthy.

    • Re:MAHA (Score:4, Interesting)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @01:48PM (#64971185)

      Can we please start by banning known unhealthy ingredients? https://legalinsurrection.com/... [legalinsurrection.com]

      The European and Asian nations don't allow much of the crap permitted in American foods because they are unhealthy.

      And yet if this information were to somehow go from Insightful status to Well-Known status, do you really think the personal responsibility deficit is gonna change much?

      In 2024 EVERY cigarette smoker knows the risks. And yet it’s still a leading killer. I fail to believe society hasn’t quite grasped the concept of shitty unhealthy addictive food yet. They know. They don’t care.

  • Typical American foods are tasty but fattening. Diet foods taste like blip, and few will force themselves to eat them; Andy in Foxtrot is a joke when she serves such food. And nobody has time for health clubs with more-than-eight-hour work days and televised sports on the weekends.

    I am sure the authors want the State to intervene, but with the Trump in charge, that is never going to happen. In fact, there will be less intervention to make the food execs happy.

    So why did the authors even bother?

    • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      "Diet foods taste like blip,"

      I actually quite like vegetables so speak for yourself. I don't know how you yanks can just eat nothing but tasteless meat, bread with way too much sugar and that yellow sticky gunk thats amusingly called cheese.

  • Link goes to /. story, not original article

  • by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @11:48AM (#64970815)

    Other nations are starting to have this issue as well but Americans have to be first in anything not good for them or the rest of the world.
    1. Cheap, non nutritious foods are high profit margin and addictive. Corporations promote the hell out of them for this reason.
    2. American society continuously gears itself towards convenience over health. The top complaint I hear about any town center is there is never enough parking. Campus? Never enough parking. We don't build around public transit and therefore want to take our cars everywhere, right up to the door. Strip malls won out over large malls because they are "cheaper" but also require less walking. People just drive from store to store.
    3. Who has time to work out or pay for a gym? I myself am exhausted after a day's work even if that involves sitting at a desk. That and when kids are involved, energy is devoted to them. If the weather is terrible, a park isn't an option.

    • It's largely US portion sizes

      In the UK if you buy a sandwich it's two slices of bread with a slice of ham and a slice of cheese.

      In the US if you buy a sandwich it's a monstrous loaf-like sub with about an inch of cold cuts jammed in there.

      Go to the movies in the US and get a literal bucket of popcorn.

      Of course US tendency not to cook at home and eat unhealthy fast food doesn't help either.

      But really, just stopping eating so much !!! If you're inactive, then go out for a brick 20-30 min walk once a day.

    • Places where there's more public transportation are noticeably thinner. People walk the last 6 blocks or so to and from destinations.

      The problem with US public transportation is that mostly the desperate and substance-abusers take it, making it too risky for the middle class, or at least it seems too risky*. It's a Catch-22: can't get enough middle class to take it until enough middle class take it.

      * Car accidents are arguably more average risk than an attack on a tram.

  • Yo Yo effect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @11:54AM (#64970831)
    I did some data analysis for an MD studying morbidly obese patients. They could lose weight via drugs/mental health intervention, but as soon as they got to a healthy weight and went of the treatment they would up at their old weight within a year to two. Their weight looked like a sine wave; and it wasn't just a dietary issue causing the obesity. Absent life long treatment, they struggled.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's because once you get overweight, your body's calibration for hunger gets messed up. Lots of things have been tried to reset it, but none of them seem to work very consistently, or at all.

      The one thing that does seem to work is a continued low dose of these new weight loss drugs like Wegovy. What we need is something that permanently resets the body's calorie intake regulation.

      Most of these surgeries are attempting to make the body feel full sooner by reducing the amount of food that can be in it, but t

  • The summary has a link to a "further reading" related to adipose tissue. But where's the link to the main article about obesity rates?
  • The linked article does not match the title or summary text ...
  • A big part of the problem is the fact that the majority of Americans spend far too much time dealing with work, and don't have enough time on recreation. By the time people are far enough into their careers to get more time off from work, we have been conditioned not to be as active, because every time we turn around, we get text/SMS messages or e-mails from work asking about this and that, even when we aren't on the clock.

    Did you know that in the USA, there is no required amount of vacation time off per

  • by paulpach ( 798828 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @12:20PM (#64970897)

    According to the WHO, everyone with a BMI of 30 or more is obese.
    I propose we raise that definition to 40 or more, because I don't want to be obese.

  • I didnt want to be over weight anymore. so i eat half meals (share with my wife) when we go out, which is less often. working out at the gym x3 a week. and refusing as many non-productive carbs as reasonable.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )

      It's obvious - eat less while still covering your nutritional requirements. When you get to your desired weight, stop reducing your intake. Do not increase it. No brainer, right?

      Nobody wants to hear it. They want an easy fix that doesn't involve not 'free feeding' whenever they want on whatever they want.

      You might as well try and hold back the tide with a bailing bucket. They don't want to be helped.

  • So what? Just move the goal posts like they do with so many other things these days e.g. proficiency in math and English to qualify for a high-school diploma.

  • We *know* high fructose corn syrup adds weight (per the 1970s: sure, your body processes fructose more easily and faster than sucrose... but I doubt that 1 in 100 /. readers do outside manual labor every day. The result is... added weight.)
    Demonstrate that the horemones in US meats that go into your body when you eat it doesn't help put weight on *you*.
    It's only anectdotal, but most people visiting Eurupe who have celiac, etc, suddenly can eat regular bread, etc (they grow different wheat in the EU).
    And on,

  • I agree I am 3/4 obese. Working to get it down to 1/2. It's someone else's fault, I'm sure.

  • > The study reveals the striking rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990 -- when just over half of adults were overweight or obese

    They make it sound like half is perfectly ok, but 75% is a disaster.

    How was it not a wake-up call that most people are overweight? So here we are 35 years later, and nothing has been learned.

  • The obesity curve (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @12:53PM (#64971009)

    In North America, the poorer you are, the heavier you're more likely to be. Until you get poor enough that you get thin... The cheapest foods per calorie include white rice, white sugar, flour, and foods from flour (pasta, noodles, etc.). The greater the divide gets between the top an bottom, the fatter your populace is likely to become.

    Of course exercise matters. But even with all else being equal, the quality of your food matters. A lot.

    • > The cheapest foods per calorie...

      If you don't want to be fat, then trying to maximize calorie intake shouldn't be your goal!

      Cut out white flour products and go for wholewheat.

      Eat more fruit and vegetables.

      To be healthy and not gain weight you want to eat food that is bulky and NOT high in calories.

      • I guess I should have clarified it further. The cheapest calories also tend to be dense. You aren't maximizing calorie intake on purpose, you're buying what's cheapest, and meals of foods with dense calories and a high glycemic index leads to weight issues.

    • In North America, the poorer you are, the heavier you're more likely to be. Until you get poor enough that you get thin... The cheapest foods per calorie include white rice, white sugar, flour, and foods from flour (pasta, noodles, etc.). The greater the divide gets between the top an bottom, the fatter your populace is likely to become.

      Of course exercise matters. But even with all else being equal, the quality of your food matters. A lot.

      Food quality matters, but I don't think the cost of food is the issue.

      When you're physically drained from working physical labour (construction, service industry) unhealthy foods will be more tempting and harder to resist. You have less leisure time to exercise, and thinness has less of an immediate payoff. You don't need to look good to impress your friends as much as you need to make rent.

      Food quality is still important, but I don't think so from a monetary perspective (or they the poor wouldn't buy junk

  • At least our invaders won't need to destroy too much infrastructure and we get on with our Oreo trays soon after the new order is installed. I'm sure that's high on the list for rebuilding, the regional Nabisco factories. No American is going to be able to physically run (in any sense) for very long. And those who hunker and shoot will eventually run out of bullets. The unfit will sell out the goodie-goodies for a Ho-Ho or even Little Debbie. I, for one, welcome our new fitness overlords. Cardio cardio card

  • {sarcasm}
    RFK knows how to solve this. Eliminate inoculations and stop fluoridating drinking water!! Woo-hoo! Problem solved.
    {/sarcasm}
  • BMI is poor way to class people

    • Yeah, I bet the skyrocketing BMI index is really due to all the totally jacked men and women I see walking around like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, and certainly not to fat because where are all these supposedly "overweight" people when you never actually see one?
      • It's a fair point, but Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime would be classified as obese with a BMI of 30.5, based on his weight 240lbs (109kg) and 6'2" height (1.88m).

        I've struggled with my weight on and off, it was incredibly annoying when I got really fit and could do 100 pushups at once, and my doctor still nagged me about being "overweight" because my BMI was high. Doctors like BMI because it's simple and easy, and they hate doing extra work when they can just nag.
      • They mean that BMI is not an indicator of health.

        There are plenty of very active, extremely healthy fat people. There are plenty of very sedentary, extremely unhealthy thin people.

        I am one of the obese healthy people. I walk at least 3 miles every day, 7+ on the weekends. I love to hike and ride my bike. I am fat. However, all my blood work always comes back in very normal levels across the board. I have low blood pressure. I feel very healthy, yet I get the passive/aggressive notices at the doctors office

  • If the majority is overweight then maybe that is the new normal. New headline: 25% of American adults are underweight

  • I can't find a link to the study they are talking about from Slashdot... but searching I found a meta-study roughly saying this. They tried to combine 134 sources of information and normalize the data... https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]

    Meanwhile, the CDCs study where they actually go out and collect data is showing actually showing less people are obese. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/o... [cbsnews.com]
  • In all likelihood, they're talking about the BMI definition of "overweight", which is famously bad, since it can't distinguish between a bodybuilder and a person who is actually fat.

    Moreover, the definition for "overweight" has changed over the years, arbitrarily. The set point for "overweight" is defined by people, with no particularly objective measurement of what that means. Turns out for some definitions of the term "overweight", all cause mortality is LOWER than people that are not overweight.

    But if th

  • are influencers on Instagram then?
  • Only half are fatter than the median!!

  • I recently got into the normal BMI range after being overweight/obese categories for decades. Started hiking as close to every day as possible a few years back. That and eating out less has been a pretty simple formula.
  • by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @03:18PM (#64971485)
    This is a very confusing post for front page on Slashdot; how did this get published? An Anonymous submitter. It states "a sweeping new study" but does not link the study. It then makes a very salacious claim that "3/4ths of Americans are obese" without any support as to how that is measured.

    According to the CDC, which is a far more reputable source than some unknown "sweeping new study", 35% of Americans are obese [cdc.gov]. Concerning, but far lower than three quarters. Second the CDC is using BMI as the index to determine this, and assumes a BMI over 30 as "obese". We've known for years that BMI was made by an economist or statistician, but not necessarily by health people or doctors; it has enormous problems with different ethnicities and people of different sizes. Using myself as an example, my BMI was tested at 29.5 recently. While I could stand to use a few pounds in the gut, I go to the gym 4 times per week, do cardio at least twice per week, do long hikes, and eat very healthy. My BMI has always been high because I have a stocky frame, a dense bone structure and put on muscle easily; it's just my body type. I always classify as borderline obese in my health check ups, and my doctors always override that as silly because it doesn't fit my body type at all.

    It then goes on to make comments about kids. I have kids in elementary school; they're around 50+ different kids per day between school and various after school activities. WHile there's a few kids who clearly have some weight issues, most are tall and skinny; just by eye very few look obese at all. Asian kids in particular are the most clear example. Asian parents who grew up in China or Japan often have a thinner body type; much of that is the diet in those countries. But if their kids are born here and eat here, with the far higher protein content in the US diet, these kids grow up with big frames and muscles. An old buddy of mine was a classic case: his parents were 150-160, 5-8 at best and emigrated here, but he grew up here; he was 6'2 and 200 lbs of muscle who played basketball every week. By BMI standards my buddy was obese, but just looking at him that was clearly not the case.

    We really need to be able to review the methods of these studies to identify if they should be taken at face value particularly when it comes to obesity; I just don't believe this post at all and it's ludicrous to start a discussion when obesity studies have such data problems.

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