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Americans are fat, study says, but not getting fatter
Americans are fat, but at least they’re not getting fatter. Sixty-eight percent of Americans are overweight or obese, but that number hasn’t changed much in the last decade, according to a team of doctors Wednesday in two studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Doctors feared that the trend of ever-increasing rates of obesity that started in the 1980s had no end. But the new findings reveal that from 1999 to 2008, the percent of obese women hovered between 33.2 and 35.5 percent, and the percent of obese men ranged between 27.5 percent to 32.2 percent — small changes for the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey which measures the Body Mass Index (BMI) for over five thousand men and women every two years. Still, doctors are hesitant to give high-fives and pop champagne.
“It’s really good news if this is a real change,” said Thomas Robinson, a professor of pediatrics and the director for the Center for Healthy Weight at Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. “But we’re still stuck with a large percent of the population that is obese.” For years, health professionals have been warning that obesity — and the diseases like diabetes it engenders — are all poised to become public health problems as deadly and costly as cigarette smoking. Robinson tersely warns that if obesity trends don’t take a dramatic reversal, “we’re going to have a disaster.”
Also found in one of the studies: Childhood obesity may be slowing too, with one exception—the heaviest boys are getting heavier. Fifteen percent of all boys between 6 to 19 now fit into the 97th percentile weight category, a group beyond obesity that researchers gingerly term “highest BMI.” Though Latino boys and African-American boys are more likely to be in this highest obesity class than white boys (19.6 percent and 15.7 percent in 2008, respectively), the only significant upward trend toward high BMI was seen in white boys.
Childhood obesity is alarming, says Robinson, because it strongly predicts obesity into adulthood, when chronic diseases are more likely. Overall, for children 2 to 19, 31.7 percent were overweight (above the 85 percentile), 16.9 were obese (above the 95th percentile) and 11.9 were above the 97th percentile.
Does the improved data mean Americans are absorbing public health messages about eating healthy and exercising regularly? “We don’t know,” said Cynthia Ogden, a CDC epidemiologist and author in both studies. More public awareness is one explanation for the apparent slowdown, say doctors. But maybe American obesity has reached a saturation point based on genetics and the environment, suggests Robinson.
In Santa Clara County, obesity levels also appeared to plateau, hovering around 18 percent for adults between 2004 and 2009, according to county health spokeswoman Joy Alexiou.
“We think more schools and parents are emphasizing better eating habits and exercise,” said Alexiou. “We’ve raised a lot of attention to this issue.” Vending machines have healthier snacks not only in schools, she says, but also in the workplace.
Nearly two-thirds of Santa Clara County schools participate in Fit for Learning, a nutrition and wellness program that teaches kindergarten through sixth-grade students about the food pyramid, exercise and making healthy food choices. In the past four years, Michelle Mount, the program’s coordinator, says she’s seen a steady increase in students and staff talking about fitness. And she noted that scores on the Fitnessgram, a physical test that includes a mile run, have improved recently in some districts. “There have been some gains, but we have a lot more work to do,” said Mount. “As a society, we’ve become very sedentary. Students sit in the classroom all day. “Fighting obesity, says Mount, “is like trying to turn around a large ship.”
Still, a few San Jose residents say the message must be getting through. “My high school son doesn’t drink soda,” said Matthew Fleming, a business owner on his way out of the San Jose Athletic Club after a lunchtime basketball game. He said he’s seen public schools emphasize health and fitness more over the last 10 years. “People are more aware that to live a longer life, you’ve got to be healthy,” said Fleming. The new data is a surprise to others. “I don’t see what the impetus will be for people to dramatically change their eating habits,” said Tim Hodgson, a sales rep for a high-tech company in San Jose. If parents aren’t drastically changing their habits, neither will their children, he said. Undoing the damage, he predicts, “is going to take some generations.”
