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More American adults determined obese, JAMA report finds

3/26/2018
Americans are still getting fatter with age. The population of adults identified as obese or severely obese continued to grow in the United States between 2007-2008 and 2015-2016, according to research published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

But there were no significant overall changes among youth, noted lead author Craig Hales, a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity among adults has been on the rise since the 1980s but plateaued among youth between 2005-2006 and 2013-2014.

According to the research, 39.6% of all adults were classified as obese and 7.7% were determined to be severely obese over the course of 2015 through 2016. That's up from 33.7% and 5.7%, respectively, from a similar report over the course of 2007 through 2008.

The increase in obesity rates among youth was less pronounced, the research found. As many as 18.5% of the population between the ages of 2 and 19 were classified as obese during the 2015/2016 period, up only sightly from 16.8% in 2007/2008. Youths classified as severely obese went up from 4.9% to 5.6% over those periods.

The data includes weight measurements of 16,875 youth and 27,449 adults (over the age of 20) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2007-2008 to 2015-2016.
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