Study Claims U.S. Obesity Rates Will Reach 42%
America’s obesity epidemic had not peaked, researchers from Harvard University claim in a new study–nor will they until at least 42 percent of adults surpass the body fat threshold.
Writing in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, lead author Alison L. Hill, a graduate student at the university and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and her colleagues say that they have come to that conclusion by studying four decades of Framingham Heart Study data. By applying mathematical modeling to that study’s statistics, they assert that claims made by some experts that the obesity rate had peaked at 34 percent are false.
"Our analysis suggests that while people have gotten better at gaining weight since 1971, they haven’t gotten any better at losing weight," Hill said in a statement. "Specifically, the rate of weight gain due to social transmission has grown quite rapidly."
While they predict that obesity rate could eventually jump from 34 percent, where it has been for the past five years, to 42 percent, they add that it could take 40 years to get there. In comparison, only 14 percent of Framingham Heart Study participants were obese in 1971, meaning that even if the obesity rate does continue to increase, it should do so at a much slower rate.
The researchers say that a non-obese adult living in the U.S. has a 2 percent chance of becoming so in any given year. Social factors may play a major role in increasing obesity rate, Hill says.
"We looked at the probability of becoming obese and what that was influenced by," she told Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters in a telephone interview Thursday. "We found there is some baseline risk of becoming obese based on the friends you have."
"We find that while non-social transmission of obesity remains the most important component in its spread, social transmission of obesity has grown much faster in the last four decades," added co-author David G. Rand, a research scientist in the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and a fellow in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
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