American Obesity Rate Tops 27%

According to a report from Gallup researchers:

The percentage of U.S. adults who are obese continued to trend upward in 2014, reaching 27.7%. This is up more than two percentage points since 2008 and is the highest obesity rate Gallup and Healthways have measured in seven years of tracking it. More Americans who were previously overweight have now moved into the obese category, while the percentage who are at normal weight has remained stable since 2013.

Medical measurements define a body mass index (BMI) of between 25 to 30 as “overweight” and above 30 as “obese.” “Normal” BMI is 18.5 to 25. At the highest end of obesity, “morbidly obese” (with BMI above 40) Americans made up 4% of the population, which is a seven-year high.

Among the eldest in the population, the situation has worsened:

Obesity rates have increased at least marginally in 2014 compared with 2008 across nearly all major U.S. demographic groups. Since 2008, Americans aged 65 and older have seen the sharpest uptick in obesity, a four-percentage-point increase to 27.4%. This is followed by increases among 45- to 64-year-olds (3.5 points).

Obesity combined with age is a prescription for health disaster, although this is not part of the Gallup conclusions.

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Finally, “well-being” among the obese is worse than it is among those with normal weight:

Americans of a normal weight have the highest average well-being (64.5), followed by those who are overweight but not obese (63.0). Underweight Americans (62.2) have lower well-being than those who are overweight. Americans who are obese have the lowest well-being across weight groups.

The scale runs from 0 to 100. The research group defines well-being this way:

The Well-Being Index measures Americans’ perceptions of their lives and their daily experiences through five interrelated elements that make up well-being: sense of purpose, social relationships, financial security, relationship to community, and physical health.

Being fat hurts more than physical health.

Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2 to Dec. 30, 2014, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey, with a random sample of 167,029 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

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