April 28, 2025 — Happy headlines late last year told us that obesity recently “dipped” in the U.S., perhaps because of medicines like semaglutide and tirzepatide. Those headlines presented a partial and misleading truth that a new analysis in Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology explains more fully. Yes, the prevalence of overweight and mild obesity has seemingly plateaued. But this […]
March 4, 2025 — It is about time. The world is waking up to the realization that rising global obesity is not a problem of personal failures. Rather, it is the product of systems with the unintended effect of promoting obesity while denying people care for this chronic disease. At the heart of World Obesity Day 2025 is the […]
February 14, 2025 — New data from CDC (yes, it’s still there) tells us obesity is still growing steadily in children, while in adults, the growth in prevalence appears to be on pause. But in both children and adults, rates for severe obesity are continuing to grow. These data, published in JAMA yesterday by Samuel Emmerich and colleagues, come […]
February 5, 2025 — Yesterday, another report came out to suggest that the prevalence of obesity and overweight may have peaked in the American population – at a combined prevalence of 75%. This particular report comes from Epic Research, based on electronic health records for more than 100 million patients. Every time one of these reports emerges, headlines are […]
December 14, 2024 — Let’s be quite clear. This is encouraging news, but it is nothing more than a glimmer of a possibility that there is a drop in U.S. obesity prevalence showing up in 2023. The data come from electronic health records. From a sample of 16,743,822 U.S. adults, Benjamin Rader, Rebecca Hazan, and John Brownstein analyzed 47,939,382 […]
October 11, 2024 — Misinformation about obesity trends has us a little cranky. For example, Reason Magazine is telling us, “Obesity in the U.S. is finally declining. You can (probably) thank Ozempic.” This is wrong on both counts. First and most basic, two data points do not make a trend. The latest NHANES data on obesity shows that the […]
October 1, 2024 — Almost immediately when the COVID pandemic came to dominate our lives, speculation began that the stress and changes it brought would make us all gain weight. Such speculation has not let up, even now. But it turns out that for adults, this is a false narrative. The best data we have for population-based estimates of […]
September 24, 2024 — This is a milestone we’ve been anticipating. New NHANES data on obesity are out and they mark a shift in the dynamics of obesity rates. We now have data to suggest that the overall rate of obesity – which has been climbing relentlessly for four decades – appears to be leveling out at about 40%. […]
September 13, 2024 — In a perverse way, it is nostalgic. Yesterday, the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) published the latest edition of their annual series: State of Obesity 2024. Though the subtitle is “Better Policies for a Healthier America,” it seems more like a replay of golden oldies in obesity policy. Reading this report, we come away with […]
April 11, 2024 — Two decades ago, the state of Arkansas became the first in the nation to require every school to send parents BMI report cards – also known as fat letters. Back then, in 2003, the obesity rate for children in Arkansas was 17%. Since then, obesity in Arkansas public school students has risen dramatically. In the […]
