US Obesity Rates Leveling Off

Love To Eat | The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and hopeful that America’s obesity rates have peaked, if not declined. Current rates are relatively constant for American men for five years and women and children for 10.

Nearly 34 percent of adults are obese, more than double the percentage 30 years ago. The share of obese children tripled during that time, to 17 percent.

Dr. William H. Dietz director of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the disease control centers believes that especially women are more aware of healthy and not-so foods. Not everyone agrees.

“Until we see rates improving, not just staying the same, we can’t have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Dr. Ludwig said the plateau might just suggest that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.” via New York Times