Some good news on the obesity epidemic today - the government says after 25 years of going up, obesity rates have leveled off. But the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stresses the levels are still high with 34 percent of adults aged 20 and older in the U.S. considered obese.
The study finds an increase in obesity in men between 1999 and 2006, but no big change in the prevalence of obesity between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 for either men or women.
“Since 1999, there appears to have been a leveling off in obesity among women, but the trend is less clear among men,” says Cynthia Ogden, a CDC researcher and lead author of the study. “We do know however that the gap between men and women has narrowed in recent years, with men catching up to the higher rates among women.”
Here are some other results from the study:
- More than a third of U.S. adults - over 72 million people - were obese in 2005-2006. This includes 33.3 percent of men and 35.3 percent of women.
- Adults aged 40 to 59 had the highest rates of obesity. About 40 percent of men in this age group were obese, compared with 28 percent of men aged 20-39, and 32 percent of men aged 60 and older. Among women, 41 percent of those aged 40-59 were obese compared with 30.5 percent aged 20-39. Women aged 65 and older had rates comparable to women in the 20 to 39 age group.
- There were big differences by race among women. About 53 percent of black women and 51 percent of Mexican-American women aged 40-59 were obese compared to about 39 percent of white women of the same age. Among women 60 and older, 61 percent of black women were obese compared to 37 percent of Mexican-American women and 32 percent of white women.
You can see the full study here.
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