Nearly 260 million people in the United States are forecast to be overweight or obese by the middle of the century, according to a new study.
Despite the popularity of effective weight loss drugs like Ozempic, authors of a new study predict that over 43 million children and adolescents and 213 million adults will be overweight or suffer from obesity by the year 2050. For comparison, in 2021, 36.5 million children and adolescents and 172 million adults fell into these categories.
Individuals are considered overweight with a BMI between 25 and 29.9 and obese with a BMI of 30 or more.
The latest findings were published in the medical journal The Lancet on November 14. According to the authors, existing strategies to manage excess weight are not working.
“Existing policies have failed to address overweight and obesity. Without major reform, the forecasted trends will be devastating at the individual and population level, and the associated disease burden and economic costs will continue to escalate,” concluded the authors.
In 2016, healthcare costs to treat conditions driven by obesity alone were upwards of $481 billion.
The study also highlighted some regions where the population had disproportionally higher BMIs, like Texas. More than half of all adolescent males ages 15 to 24 in the state are considered overweight or obese.
As previously detailed in The Dallas Express, Texas continues to battle an obesity epidemic. In 2021-2022, 17% of Texas children between ages 10 and 18 were considered obese.
To conclude their latest finding, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington produced a model that projected overweight and obesity trends using past data from more than 100 sources, including all major national surveillance data.
“Obesity is at a crisis point throughout the USA,” said Dr. Marie Ng, co-author of the study and an affiliate associated professor with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, per CNN.
Despite the rise in the use of GLP-1 weight loss drugs, Ng says more needs to be done to prevent unhealthy weight gain, starting with pregnancy and infant feeding practices. A recent study found that lowering sugar intake early in one’s life, including while in utero, was linked to a significant reduction in the risk of obesity later in life.