Obesity Problems in the USA
Obesity in USA continues to increase and is considered as one of the major health risks in the country. In many of the other industrialized nation obesity has been a problem but in USA the rate of obesity is the highest.
Obesity Statistics
In the last few decades the obesity rate has increased significantly for all age groups. If we look at obesity statistics, a person is said to have severe obesity if his or her Body Mass Index or BMI is greater than 40 kg/m2 and in US this has jumped from 1 in 200 to 1 in 50.
Extreme obesity which occurs when body mass index is more than 50 kg/m2 has been increasing and has moved up from 1 in 2000 to 1 in 400, similar is the situation in case of adolescents as well as children. In US about 9 million children who are over 6 years are obese.
Earlier only adults suffered from obesity problems but this totally changed in last few years and now almost 20 to 30% of children as well as adolescents in the country are considered obese. According to statistics, obese children have higher chances of becoming obese in their adulthood as well as develop many health related problems caused by obesity.
It has been found that African American as well as Mexican American adolescents are suffering more from overweight problems in comparison to white adolescents. About thirty nine percent of American children are also obese or are at the risk of becoming obese. The chances of these adolescent children becoming obese adults in as much as seventy percent which becomes eight percent if any of the parents is also suffering from obesity problems.
Obesity and Health Problems
Obesity causes many health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, different disabilities as well as cardiovascular diseases. Obesity also leads to different complications at the time of pregnancy in women. It is a serious problem that babies from obese women are 3 times likely to die in 1 month and 2 times likely that they will be stillborn as compared to babies which are born of mothers with normal weight.
It is also one of the primary contributing factors to many deaths in the USA and has also lead to considerable increase in medical expenditures in the last few decades. Obesity is consuming almost 10 to 15% of country’s health care cost, which is certainly a significant expenditure.