Obesity is high and holding steady in the U.S., but the proportion of those with severe obesity — especially women — has climbed since a decade ago, according to new government research.
The U.S. obesity rate is about 40%, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people.
Nearly 1 in 10 of those surveyed reported severe obesity, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
Women were nearly twice as likely as men to report severe obesity. The overall obesity rate appeared to tick down vs. the 2017-2020 survey, but the change wasn’t considered statistically significant; the numbers are small enough that there’s mathematical chance they didn’t truly decline.
That means it’s too soon to know whether for obesity, including blockbuster weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound, can help ease the epidemic of the chronic disease linked to a host of health problems, according to Dr. Samuel Emmerich, the CDC public health officer who led the latest study. “We simply can’t see down to that detailed level to prescription medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence,” Emmerich said.
“Hopefully that is something we can see in the future.” Most telling though, the results that show that the overall obesity rate in the U.S.
has not changed significantly in a decade, even as the rate of severe obesity climbed from nearly 8% in the 2013-2014 survey to nearly 10% in the most recent one. Before that, obesity had increased rapidly .
