Obesity in U.S. Has Surged, Survey Says

By REUTERS

HICAGO, Oct. 8 — About 59 million American adults, one in every three, are obese, and the number of overweight children has tripled in the last two decades, new studies show.

The biggest gains in weight are in people over age 60, black women, and black and Mexican-American teenagers, say the studies, which are to be published on Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Half of all black women 40 and older are obese; so are a fourth of black and Mexican-American teenagers, a 10 percent rise over the last decade.

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Among adults, the prevalence of obesity was 30.5 percent, up from 22.9 percent in a survey conducted from 1988 to 1994. The number of those considered overweight but not yet obese also increased, to 64.5 percent from 55.9 percent.

Among children, 15.5 percent of those ages 12 to 19 were overweight, as were 15.3 percent of those ages 6 to 11 and 10.4 percent of those ages 2 to 5. In the 1988-94 study, the rates were 10.5 percent, 11.3 percent and 7.2 percent.

The studies were done by the National Center for Health Statistics in 1999 and 2000.