Obesity rate in U.S. adults no longer growing, new CDC data suggests

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Obesity rate in U.S. adults no longer growing, new CDC data suggests

The latest CDC survey found 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. were obese. A map shows the states with the highest and lowest rates.
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HealthWatch


Obesity rate in U.S. adults no longer growing, new CDC data suggests​


By Alexander Tin

Edited By Paula Cohen

September 24, 2024 / 12:01 AM EDT / CBS News

Around 40% of adults in the U.S. are obese, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests — marking the first time in over a decade that the nation's obesity rate has not inched up in results from the federal government's national health survey.

The figures come from a new report by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, analyzing data collected through the agency's decadeslong National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey nationwide.

In 2000, the survey estimated that around 30% of adults were obese, defined as having a body mass index of greater than or equal to 30. By 2020, the CDC's estimate of the adult obesity rate had climbed to 41.9%.

Now the CDC estimates that 40.3% of adults are obese, looking at survey data from 2021 through 2023.

While the difference from 2020 to 2023 was too small to be counted as a statistically significant decrease, the modest decline breaks a streak of rates that had been increasing virtually every year since 2011.

"In the United States, the prevalence of obesity in adults remains above the Healthy People 2030 goal of 36.0%," the agency said in the report, citing the federal government's official goal to reduce the share of Americans who are overweight or obese.

Obesity rates remain highest among adults 40 to 59 years old, at 46.4%. Rates are lowest among those 20 to 39 years old, at 35.5%.

Severe obesity rates continue to increase, the CDC's survey also found. Adjusted for age, the prevalence of adults with a BMI of greater than or equal to 40 increased from 7.7% to 9.4%.

At these higher ranges of obesity, the National Institutes of Health warns that people are at the greatest risk of the diseases that are linked with weight gain, like heart disease and diabetes.


Map shows states with highest, lowest obesity rates​


The new figures come just a week after the CDC released its state map of obesity rates around the country, based on results from a different ongoing survey run by the agency, which found that more than a third of adults in 23 states were obese in 2023. That is up from no states with more than a third of residents being obese a decade ago in 2013.

Only the District of Columbia and Colorado had less than a quarter of residents who were obese in 2023. That's down from seven states and D.C. that had rates below 25% in 2013.

Map of U.S. obesity rates


In 2023, more than 1 in 5 adults in all U.S. states and territories had obesity. Source: Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance SystemU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

"This new data highlight the need for obesity prevention and treatment options, which start with building healthier communities where people of all ages have safe places for physical activity, and where health care and healthy food options are accessible and affordable for all," Dr. Karen Hacker, head of the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, said in a statement following the map's release.

The release of the new CDC figures also comes ahead of a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee hearing with the chief executive officer of Novo Nordisk, questioning the drugmaker for the high prices it charges for its blockbuster semaglutide drugs, branded as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss.

A surge of demand for Novo Nordisk's drugs, as well as similar tirzepatide drugs made by rival Eli Lilly branded as Zepbound for weight loss and Mounjaro for diabetes, have landed them on the Food and Drug Administration's shortage list for years.

"Epidemiologists have estimated that more than 40,000 lives per year could be saved if Wegovy and other weight-loss drugs were made affordable and widely available in the United States," the panel, led by Democrats and Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, said in a release ahead of the hearing.
 
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The US has passed peak obesity, a new survey suggests. Is it the Ozempic effect?​



One in eight American adults have tried weight loss drugs​

Julia Musto

4 days ago

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A woman measures her stomach. US obesity rates have fallen in the last few years, new data shows, possibly the result of new weight loss drugs hitting the market


A woman measures her stomach. US obesity rates have fallen in the last few years, new data shows, possibly the result of new weight loss drugs hitting the market (Getty Images)

​


The United States has passed peak obesity, according to new data, suggesting that the sweeping uptake of weight-loss drugs could be having an effect.

The obesity rate in American adults fell by 2 percent between 2020 and 2023, according to a US National Health and Nutrition Examination survey.

The new survey showed no significant difference in the drop in obesity between men and women. However it did note that the prevalence of severe obesity was higher in women than men from each group.

It also found that the prevalence of obesity was lower in adults with a bachelor’s degree or and higher in adults with less education.

And while no direct link has been established between weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic and the decline in obesity, it does appear to be a strong possibility, considering the medications hit the market around 2021.

Approximately one in eight US adults have tried weight loss drugs, and more than 15 million are using a prescription. Novo Nordisk, the company behind Wegovy, told Fox Business in May that at least 25,000 Americans were starting the drug every week.

The US obesity rate fall last year, down two percentage points.


The US obesity rate fall last year, down two percentage points. (Canva/Julia Musto)

A study using data from 2020 to 2023, published in May, found a 594 percent increase of young adults and teens using this new generation of weight loss drugs each month.

Meanwhile the new survey showed that rates of obesity were dropping faster among college graduates, according to analysis of the data byThe Financial Times.

Two in five adults and nearly 15 million children and teenagers are obese in the US with rates rising more than 11 percent from the late 1990s through 2020. Obesity increases the risk of certain types of cancer, stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and premature death.

The new National Health survey is based on weight and height measurements taken by those in medical professions, and not in figures reported by patients, making the data more reliable, the FT notes.

The weight loss drugs, originally intended to treat diabetes, work by mimicking a natural hormone that can suppress a user’s appetite.

While Wegovy is one of a handful of drugs approved by the FDA for weight loss, Ozempic is only approved for Type 2 diabetes treatment.
 
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Everyone’s on Ozempic. So why will no one talk about it?​


The fashion world is embracing weight-loss drugs — discreetly

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Ozempic, a major tool in the fight against obesity © New York Times/Redux/eyevine


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One of the most notable developments at fashion month? There’s been a lot more space available, for a start. The benches have seemed roomier. And it’s not for a lack of people at the circus, it’s just that many of those people are now half the size. In the wake of widespread availability of weight-loss drugs for more than a year now, we are beginning to see the true scale of the Ozempic effect.

That Ozempic (or Wegovy, the name by which the weight-loss version of the drug semaglutide is marketed) should have proliferated in an industry that has always venerated thinness will hardly come as a surprise. Nevertheless, it’s stunning to see colleagues suddenly transform into the incredible shrinking woman — or man.

What I find curious about this new wave of waifs is how coy they are about talking about the drug. I’ve lost count of the number of newly emaciated editors and stylists extolling their current diet and brand new fitness regimens. I spent several minutes the other day discussing one editor’s weight-loss journey — he had shed some 20kg since the winter, simply, he insisted, by taking his diet in hand. He told others that he had been using weight-loss injections, which suggests he felt a stigma associated with the drug. And he might be right. Another editor railed against Ozempic “cheaters” who simply shrug off the extra kilos without using the traditional tools of denial, willpower and hunger pangs.

Ozempic and Wegovy are now major tools in the fight against obesity. Their maker, the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, now has a market capitalisation of around $560bn: Ozempic alone made up 27 per cent of its net sales in its 2023 financial year. (No wonder other manufacturers, such as Eli Lilly, are keen to grab some market share.) The costs, currently the subject of a debate raised this week by Senator Bernie Sanders, who is chair of the US Senate health committee, have become a source of ire: Americans pay around $969 a month for their Ozempic, whereas Germans pay only $59. And demand is insatiable. Forty per cent of American adults are currently categorised as obese, a number that has dropped, according to a report by the Centre for Disease Control, by 2 per cent in the past three years. It’s too soon to say whether this is due to the increasing use of the weight-loss drug, but it does show a reversal in a trend for the first time since records began.

Right now, there is a global shortage of the drug: pity the poor diabetics for whom it was initially designed. And because of widespread uptake and patchy distribution, few definitive studies have been able to ascertain its long-term effects. Some suggested that most users will regain two-thirds of the weight they lost within a year of stopping, and others that it gives some people indigestion and diarrhoea. When I talked this week to Dr Nathan Curran, a longevity specialist at London’s upscale private Mayfair Galen Clinic, he noted that most of his clients on Ozempic expect to take a small dose for the rest of their lives. The only downside he had noticed was that, unless patients made significant lifestyle changes in accordance with the rapid weight loss, they would have a lot of wasted muscle or “skinny fat” to deal with, and that their weight loss would likely plateau within two years.

For many people, semaglutide is now a way of life. And the benefits far outweigh the risks. In another study reported on this week in the Guardian, the healthcare costs and productivity losses from the global obesity crisis far outstrip the cost of the weight-loss drugs.

Despite that, most of the people I know who are using would in no way be termed obese. Instead, they are simply using the drug to look “catwalk thin”. And hey. No judgment. I totally understand that someone who has spent a career in a business that loathes fat might want to join the wraithlike club. That so few of them want to discuss their drug use just goes to show how pervasive sizeism remains. Culturally, we are still dismissive of anyone who has simply shrugged off weight without having the “do the work”.

Even Lizzo, the outsize singer once considered an icon of body inclusivity and self-love, has started posting pictures of, or should that be in the parlance of tabloid journalism, “flaunting” her newly diminished figure on social media. Her appearance, she says, is the product of hard work, clean living and regular skipping-rope sessions at the gym. She says she hasn’t used weight-loss drugs to achieve her slimmer size, but the media is desperate for her to “admit” that she’s indulged.

Why should she be “admitting” to anything? Why does my slimmed-down front-row friend feel the need to deny his Ozempic use? Why is the language of weight loss still so deeply coded in moral judgments and the unshakeable belief in the “deserving thin”? Slimmer people, goes the narrative, are stronger, sharper and more disciplined. Fat people are deemed lazy and lacking in will. Ozempic has only compounded those prejudices — it’s still a game of us and them. And it seems to me a weird bias that insists that being fat is a personality trait that one must carry long after the weight is gone.

It’s especially painful considering that, until very recently, fashion was dealing with a reckoning in which we demanded to see more body diversity. At most shows this month, the catwalks have featured one single “outsize” model, forced to walk, like some totem of our tolerance, among a phalanx of rail-thin girls. Fashion inclusivism, once a subject in the ascendant, has been squashed back to low priority: fat is fine in fashion, it seems, so long as that fat person is someone other than oneself.
jo.ellison@ft.com

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Seoul Gleou

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knowing how articles like this work, i'm VERY skeptical; i think these are fluff pieces from big sugar and food companies

especially given the armageddon GLP-1 is about to create, if it hasn't already happened
 
Cave Savage

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I actually believe it since I know a few fat people recently who lost a lot of weight from bariatric surgery or ozempic
 
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