Americans, in almost every demographic group, are no longer getting fatter and fatter. They're just fat, and obesity seems to have reached a plateau at very high rates.
The American population as a whole is no longer getting fatter and fatter. In fact, Americans are no longer the fattest people in the world. That dubious honor now goes to the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru, where 71 percent of the population is obese, and the Cook Islands, also located in the South Pacific, where 63 percent of the population is obese. In fact, the United States ranks eighteenth in obesity rates worldwide, with 33 percent of adults identified as obese, well behind Kuwait (42 percent) and slightly behind Barbados, the Bahamas, Qatar and Egypt (at 34 percent each). Although twice as many American adults and three times as many American children are obese compared to 30 years ago, obesity rates in the US have remained stable since about 2010.
Of course, although there are 17 nations where a greater percentage of the population is obese than in the United States, there are 174 nations where the percentage of obese adults is lower. Moreover, experts don't believe that the stabilizing of obesity rates in the USA is due to better diets and more exercise. Dr David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital in Boston says that the plateau might just suggest that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.”
This is hardly a flattering portrait of American lifestyle and eating habits, but is it fair and accurate?
What Is The Real Status Of The Obesity Epidemic In The USA?
The United States is actually a mixture of success and horror stories regarding obesity. Obesity rates among toddlers aged two to five are actually down since 2003, from 13.9 percent to 8.4 percent. Obesity rates in most groups of Americans have been unchanged, not going up, and not going down, since 2003.
Only one group of Americans has a continuing increase in rates of obesity, women over the age of 60. Among white women of all ages, nearly 63 percent are overweight or obese. For Hispanic women of all ages in the United States, this rate goes up to 72 percent. For African-American women, the figure is 83 percent. Different groups in the USA are getting different results in the war against weight.
Why Do Different Groups Fare Differently In The Battle Against Obesity?
Experts opine that improvements in obesity among 2 to 5 year-olds reflect increasing popularity of breastfeeding, and social acceptance of the practice, bans on sugar-sweetened drinks in day care and preschools, national programs promoting exercise, and state-level programs that ensure that mothers, infants, and small children get more vegetables and fruit.
On the other hand, continually rising rates of overweight and obesity may reflect basic genetic differences particular to Hispanic and African-American women. This would not explain, however, why rates of overweight and obesity are not going up among white, Hispanic, and African-American men over 60.
What The Statistics Don't Tell Us About Obesity And Overweight
In the most recent years for which statistics are available, 2011-2012, a little under 17 percent of American youth and a little over 34 percent of American adults are obese. Using the body mass index (BMI) as a tool for diagnosing obesity, however, has its limitations.
Body mass index only takes into account body mass (weight) and height. It doesn't take into consideration the reality that different people have different builds and body types. A professional weight lifter, for example may have a very lean body but a very high BMI, because she has a lot of muscle mass. Most persons of Asian descent, especially those of South Asian descent, tend to have more body fat than their BMI's suggest. That is because thinner people of Asian descent tend to accumulate "belly fat" more than people in other heritage groups.
Is the obesity epidemic due to the fact that Americans eat too much? That's probably an oversimplification of the issues. After all, 100 years ago, most American women consumed 3,000 to 3,500 calories per day and most American men consumed 5,000 to 5,500 calories per day, and obesity was almost unknown except among the very wealthy who had household servants. The obesity epidemic probably has less to do with the fact that Americans eat too much than with the fact that they exercise far too little. Getting as much exercise in a day as most experts recommend for a week, the equivalent of 2,000 calories a day, undoubtedly would relieve the obesity epidemic. However, Americans are not likely to give up their cars, their household appliances, and their central heating and air conditioning just so their bodies can burn more caloires.
Is the obesity epidemic in the USA due to eating too much fat and protein? Over the last 20 years, Americans have been reducing their consumption of both protein and fat.
They have been increasing their consumption of carbohydrates, especially carbohydrates in "fat free" products. Some scientists even believe that the promotion of low-fat products in the 1990's was a major part of the problem. “I believe the low-fat message promoted the obesity epidemic,” says Lyn Steffen, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. When we cut out fat, we began eating foods that were worse for us, loaded with sugar and salt.
What can you do to avoid becoming part of America's obesity statistics? The standard advice, which is largely unappreciated but valid, is to exercise more and to eat less. Exercising more doesn't necessarily mean spending another five minutes a day at the gym. It could be something as simple as walking to work instead of taking your car when the weather is nice.
It could mean vacuuming under the couch every time you vacuum around the couch, or parking in a spot farther away from the entrance to the supermarket.
Eating less doesn't mean giving up entire groups of macronutrients, such as protein and fat. Eating less can mean always leaving just a little room for more, never eating until you are stuffed. If you are anxious about where your next meal is coming from, buy ahead, and exercise the discipline to eat later, not now. Your body will reward you by finding your natural weight as you take control of your appetite.