Most Americans risk obesity, government says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ninety percent of U.S. men and 70
percent of women eventually become overweight, meaning hardly
any American will escape it unless something drastic changes,
U.S. researchers said on Monday.

The older they get, the more likely Americans are to put on
the extra pounds that take them out of the healthy weight class
and make them overweight or obese, the researchers said.

“National surveys and other studies have told us that the
United States has a major weight problem, but this study
suggests that we could have an even more serious degree of
overweight and obesity over the next few decades,” said Dr.
Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and
Blood Institute, which paid for the study.

“In addition, these results may underestimate the risk for
some ethnic groups.” Black and Hispanic Americans are more
prone to be overweight or obese than whites.

The report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine,
found that over 30 years, nine out of 10 men and seven out of
10 women taking part in a Massachussetts-based study became or
stayed overweight.

More than a third were obese or became obese.

“Our results, although not surprising, are worrisome,” said
Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, an Associate Professor of Medicine at
Boston University School of Medicine, who led the study.

“If the trend continues, our country will continue to face
substantial health problems related to excess weight.”

For the study, Vasan and colleagues studied 4,000 white
adults taking part in the ongoing Framingham Heart Study, a
giant, long-term study of people living in Framingham,
Massachusetts.

Volunteers aged 30 to 59 were followed for 30 years, from
1971 to 2001.

Among other things the researchers measured each
volunteer’s body mass index or BMI — a standard measure of
weight relative to height, which is an indicator of total body
fat. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is considered a healthy weight. A
BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, and obesity begins
with a BMI of 30 or higher.

About one in five women and one in four men who were at a
healthy BMI at one point became overweight after four years.
Among those who were overweight, up to 23 percent of women and
13 percent of men became obese within four years.

Being “overweight and (suffering from) obesity increase the
risk of poor health. We hope these results will serve as a
wake-up call to Americans of all ages,” Nabel said.

“Even those who are now at a healthy weight need to be
careful about maintaining energy balance to avoid gaining
weight. Taking simple steps to make sure that overall the
number of calories you consume do not exceed the amount you
burn can play a major role in lowering your risk for many
chronic conditions.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has
found that 65 percent of U.S. adults aged 20 or older are
either overweight or obese and 30 percent of adults are obese.

A BMI calculator can be found at

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/calc-bmi.htm.