4.2: Obesity Epidemic
Obesity in The U.S.
The number of people with obesity has been increasing for decades. Results from the 2017–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) [3] provide estimated percentages across time showing the growing trend. Data from the years 1988-1994 through 2017–2018, show obesity prevalence of adults in the U.S. increased from 22.9% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity in adults increased from 2.8% to 9.2%. The data shows that children in the U.S. are also impacted by obesity with the percentage of obese children ages 2 through 19 in the United States increasing from 10% in 1988-1994 to 19.3% in 2017-2018 (refer to Tables \(\PageIndex{3}\) and \(\PageIndex{4}\)).
| Years | Percentage Overweight | Percentage Obese | Percentage Severely Obese |
| 1988-1994 | 33.1 | 22.9 | 2.8 |
| 1999-2000 | 34 | 30.5 | 4.7 |
| 2005-2006 | 32.6 | 34.3 | 5.9 |
| 2011-2012 | 33.6 | 34.9 | 6.4 |
| 2017-2018 | 30.7 | 42.4 | 9.2 |
| Years | Percentage Overweight | Percentage Obese | Percentage Severely Obese |
| 1988-1994 | 13 | 10 | 2.6 |
| 1999-2000 | 14.2 | 13.9 | 3.6 |
| 2005-2006 | 14.6 | 15.4 | 4.7 |
| 2011-2012 | 14.9 | 16.9 | 5.6 |
| 2017-2018 | 16.1 | 19.3 | 6.1 |
Obesity in The World
The U.S. is not the only country seeing a rise in obesity. Since 1975, obesity across the world has nearly tripled. Data from 2016 show that more than 1.9 billion (39%) adults around the world were overweight with 650 million (13%) obese. Most of the world’s population live in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. Obesity rates in the world’s children and adolescents increased from less than 1% (equivalent to five million girls and six million boys) in 1975 to nearly 6% in girls (50 million) and nearly 8% in boys (74 million) in 2016. In 2016, there were 50 million girls and 74 million boys with obesity in the world, while the global number of moderately or severely underweight girls and boys was 75 million and 117 million respectively. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022 [4] .