Obesity in USA and around world

 
STATISTA is a Swedish firm that claims it is empowering people with data, insights and facts across 170 industries and 150+ countries.

At a hefty price of $199 month, billed annually which sounds like you have to have a yearly subscription. A starter account gets:

Immediate access to 1m+ statistics

Download as XLS, PNG, PDF & PPT

Complete source information including background details

If that does not get you enough there is a personal account for $549, again billed annually which give you access to all reports.

HOWEVER, they do have a Basic Account for FREE. I started mine on February 26th. You get a daily email with some starter statistics; usually a very brief article not larger than our posts with a graphic. 

March 4 World Obesity Day Infographics

Obesity is rising in the U.S.

Obesity is on the rise in the United States. According to figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, four in ten American adults now have a body mass index at 30 or higher, classifying them as obese. This has climbed since the turn of the century, when it was approximately three in ten.

Obesity rates around the World

In most OECD countries that collect self-reported weight data, more than half of adults were overweight or obese and nearly one in five were obese in 2021 (latest available data). 

Obesity prevalence was particularly high in the United States, with just over a third of respondents saying that they are obese. In Chile and the United Kingdom rates were just above one in four, while Korea had the lowest share of people with obesity of the countries studied at just 4.3 percent.

The above graphs from Statista encouraged me to seek out other information about BMI.

US Obesity Mapped

Three states - Louisiana, Oklahoma, and West Virginia - have over 40% of their adult residents listed as obese. Their respective obesity figures among adults stood at 40.1%, 40.0%, and 41.0%.

Meanwhile, adults with some college education had a 35.9% rate of obesity, and those with a high school education were next up at 35.7% obesity prevalence. The level of obesity among college graduates is 27.2%.

The statistics also show that the 45-54 age cohort has the highest prevalence of obesity in the United States, standing at 39.9%.

Younger adults, aged between 18 and 24, were found to have the lowest rate of obesity, at some 20.5%, meaning they were almost half as likely to be obese as those twenty years their senior.

Calculate Your BMI

BMI Chart for Men and Women

BMI was created in the 1800s.

It did not gain popularity until a study published in the Journal of Chronic Diseases in July 1972. This study concluded that BMI is the best proxy for body fat percentage among ratios of weight and height.2 Major health organizations agree with this finding.

A large body of research suggests that people with higher BMIs are more prone to health-related complications.5

All of the BMI studies cited above were done across large populations.

Using that data and applying it to an individual without looking at the person’s overall health is a bad idea.

Someone can have a normal BMI but still have a high visceral fat percentage and be at increased risk for diabetes & heart disease. On the other hand, a sumo wrestler with a high BMI but little visceral fat will be metabolically healthy.10

Additionally, as most people know, essentially all NFL running backs, most of whom sport 6-packs and sub-10% body fat, would be classified as obese under this system. Even a recreational athlete with slightly above-average muscle mass could be considered overweight.

How Useful is the BMI?

Should we stop giving so much "weight" to BMI?

Maybe. Research suggests that BMI alone frequently misclassifies metabolic health, which is linked to how much fat a person has and how it is distributed. And, BMI may be particularly unreliable during pregnancy, for athletes, and the elderly.

And there's another problem: current BMI definitions of overweight or obesity were based largely on white populations. Yet body composition, including percent body fat or amount of muscle mass, can vary by race and ethnic group. So, BMI may help predict health status among people who are white, but may be less accurate for people in other racial and ethnic groups For example, defining obesity by standard measures of BMI tends to overestimate risk in Black individuals and underestimate it for those of Asian descent. 

My Own Weight and BMI

Below is a table of my weight and BMI at various times in my life.  My weight was around 142 to 147 during college and graduate school.  It increased to be between 162 and 165 when I got my own apartment and began to cook most of my own food. Before that I had eaten mostly to satisfy my hunger. That changed when I had food available all the time.

The 162 to 165 has been my most common weight except that after I retired I began a regular exercise program which brought me down to somewhere between 155 and 158 which is my current weight. However, when I developed my balance problem which reduced my exercise my weight increased to the 174 to 178 range.  I am sure that I never weighed 185 which is the top of the overweight range, just shy of obesity.

Weight	BMI	Classify	Low	High
142	22.9	Normal	18.5	24.9
147	23.7	Normal	18.5	24.9
158	25.5	Overweight	25.0	29.9
162	26.1	Overweight	25.0	29.9
165	26.6	Overweight	25.0	29.9
174	28.7	Overweight	25.0	29.9
178	28.7	Overweight	25.0	29.9
185	29.9	Overweight	25.0	29.9

My weight is always taken right when I get up before I eat or drink anything. I do that almost every day which probably helps me to control my weight. Anytime that I overate because of holydays, or eating out at professional meals, I would exercise for a few weeks to bring things back what they had been before.

After I retired my cardiologist did encourage me to get my weight into the normal range. I think that was a mistake. I was doing a lot of exercise, but I was also using sugar in the form of soft drinks, ice cream and pastries.  He should have concentrated more on having me get ride of the sugar rather than on reducing weight. That is what I am doing now. I think it is important to get my protein (a lot of vegetable protein but not neglecting animal protein) and the right kind of fat (e.g. almonds daily).