Study: Obesity rate will slow but remain high

May 10, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

RALEIGH, N.C.

The nation’s obesity rate may increase more slowly than expected in the next two decades, but the number of people considered severely overweight is likely to keep climbing sharply.

That’s according to a new long-range forecast of obesity trends by researchers at Duke University, RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They presented the study Monday morning at the CDC’s annual conference on obesity control and prevention, called Weight of the Nation, in Washington, D.C.

Previous projections based on historical trends in obesity had suggested that more than half the nation — perhaps even 70 percent — could be obese by 2030, said Eric Finkelstein, the lead author of the new study and an associate research professor in the Duke Global Health Institute and deputy director in the Health Services Research Program at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore.

He and his fellow researchers, though, tried to sharpen the picture by considering an array of variables that have shown correlation with obesity, such as trends in unemployment, the price of fast food and even access to the Internet.

Their results suggest that the percentage of adult Americans who are obese will climb at a slower rate that previously expected, growing by about one-third by 2030, to a total of 42 percent of the population.

That’s a notable slow-down. From the late 1970s to 2008, the prevalence of obesity had more than doubled. It had increased by about one half during past two decades.

Even the prediction for slower growth is troubling, said the researchers, because health-care costs associated with obesity are so great that even a small increase will harm the nation’s efforts to contain health-care costs.

The increase to 42 percent represents additional health-care costs of about $550 billion spread over the next two decades. It also means another 32 million obese people whose weight is, by definition, a medical condition.

“Even if there is a plateauing, this is still a very serious problem,” said William H. Dietz, director of CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity.

Particularly alarming, they said, is that their study suggests that the percentage of people who are considered severely obese — around 100 pounds overweight — is expected to more than double, so that by 2030 it will include 11 percent of the American population.

People who are severely obese are much more likely to have medical problems and higher absenteeism at work and to die early.