US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? 

United States: Obesity remains a huge problem for Americans as far as their health is concerned. New data received by the governments indicate severe obesity, a condition that involves storing far too much fat in the body, has risen to a great extent in the last decade. 

More about the study 

About 40 percent of the population in the US is obese, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people. 

Overall, 9 percent of those polled said they were suffering from severe obesity, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Moreover, women were nearly two times as likely as men to report severe obesity. 

The general obesity rate looked to have decreased in comparison to what was observed in the 2017-2020 survey. However, it was not considered as a statistically significant change. 

US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

That is, the numbers are small enough that there exists a probability that the rates did not fall at all. 

What more are the experts stating? 

Dr. Samuel Emmerich conducted the latest study for CDC as a public health officer. He said it is still early to determine its impact on the disease, including new obesity treatments, which include weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound. 

What they found is that the combined obesity estimate of the United States in the last decade has not considerably altered.  

According to Emmerich, “We simply can’t see down to that detailed level to prescription medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence.”  

The prevalence of severe obesity increased from nearly eight percent in the study between 2013 and 2014 to nearly 10 percent in the most recent study. 

Prior to that, obesity rates had risen rapidly in the US since the 1990s, according to US federal research. 

Obesity and severe obesity are expressed in terms of BMI, which is calculated with the help of height and weight. The above BMI indicates that a person is obese, as per the Food and Drugs Administration. 

Super obesity is defined as the condition when the person’s BMI is 40 or more. 

Solveig Cunningham is a professor of global health at Emory University who is interested in obesity. 

“Seeing increases in severe obesity is even more alarming because that’s the level of obesity that’s most highly associated with some of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and lower quality of life,” Cunningham added. 

Cunningham also added that it is not apparent why severe obesity rates were higher among women.