Just ahead of the holiday festivities, the National Center for Health Statistics has issued a report on trends in obesity by age. Do you think this is just a coincidence? Yes, of course it is. Nevertheless, perhaps a review of the trends will rein in the temptation to overindulge in these final days of a difficult year.
If obesity were a mystery to be solved, then the trends presented by the NCHS report provide an important clue. The clue is this: it's happening across the board. No age group is immune. Obesity is surging among the young, the middle-aged, and the old. Take a look...
Percent obese by age, 1988–94 to 2017–18
| total | 20-39 | 40-59 | 60-plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | 42.4% | 40.0% | 44.8% | 42.8% |
| 2007-08 | 33.7 | 30.7 | 36.2 | 35.1 |
| 1999-00 | 30.5 | 26.0 | 33.5 | 33.5 |
| 1988-94 | 22.9 | 17.7 | 27.9 | 23.7 |
The data used to calculate these numbers are collected by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The survey doesn't simply ask Americans how much they weigh—those self-reports would fall far short of reality. NHANES quantifies reality by dispersing mobile examination units around the country, from which trained health technicians measure the height and weight of a representative sample of the public. Over the past three decades, the survey's measurements show a doubling in the percentage of Americans who are obese among 20-to-39-year olds, a 61 percent increase among 40-to-59-year-olds and an 81 percent rise among people aged 60 or older. That's a lot of overindulging.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Prevalence of Overweight, Obesity, and Severe Obesity among Adults Aged 20 and Over: United States, 1960–1962 through 2017–2018
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