October 10, 2002	Thursday	Sha’aban 3, 1423

CHICAGO: Americans are still getting fatter.

About 59 million people, one in every three US adults, are now obese and the number of overweight children has tripled in the last two decades, according to a study.

“The problem keeps getting worse,” said Tommy Thompson, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We’ve seen virtually a doubling in the number of obese persons over the past two decades and this has profound health implications. Obesity increases a person’s risk for a number of serious conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and some types of cancer,” he said in a statement.

Cynthia Ogden, one of the authors of the studies from the National Center for Health Statistics, said increases in portion sizes, eating out more frequently and an inactive population were all blamed for the problem.

The studies published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association found that the biggest weight gains have been seen in people over the age of 60, black and Mexican-American teens and black women.

Ogden said the increase among black women has occurred among all ages, though half of that group age 40 and above are obese. So are one fourth of black and Mexican-American teens, a 10 per cent increase over the last decade.

The studies surveyed more than 4,000 adults and in excess of 4,000 children and teens in 1999 and 2000.

Among adults, the prevalence of obesity was 30.5 per cent, compared to 22.9 per cent in a survey conducted from 1988 to 1994. The number of those considered overweight but not yet obese also increased during this period from 55.9 per cent to 64.5 per cent, the study said.

Among children, 15.5 per cent of those aged 12 to 19 were overweight, as were 15.3 per cent of those aged 6 to 11 and 10.4 per cent of those aged 2 to 5. In the 1988-1994 study, the respective rates were 10.5 per cent, 11.3 per cent and 7.2 per cent.

The study defined overweight and obesity on the basis of body mass index — a formula in which a person’s body weight is divided by height squared. Under that calculation a man 6 feet (1.82 metres) tall would be considered overweight at 184 pounds 83.4 kgs and obese at 221 pounds 100 kgs.—Reuters