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Currently, about 42 percent of Americans are obese - meaning they carry around about 50 pounds more than a person of medium average weight. Another 35 percent of Americans are overweight.
The situation is expected to get worse by 2025 when half of all Americans are expected to be obese, according to a study by the American Obesity Association, formerly the Massachusetts Science Center.
The percentage of obese Americans is expected to hit 60 percent by 2030, said the Woburn-based American Obesity Association. The findings are an update on Harvard University School of Public Health’s 2019 obesity forecast.
This is particularly worrisome news amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 60 percent of COVID deaths may be linked to obesity, the association said.
Over the last 50 years, as the obesity epidemic has steadily worsened, more than 5,000 recommendations have been made to prevent obesity, the study said.
Obesity is an underlying factor in many deadly illnesses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The condition disproportionately affects people of color and people without a college education.
A 2019 CDC study found that at least 20 percent of adults in each U.S. state and territory are obese - except for Colorado and Washington, D.C.
In New York, 26.4 percent of adults self-reported being obese in 2019.
The states with the most obese adults were Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
To see the data, visit the CDC online.
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