Americans are increasingly conscious of their diets and they're downloading fitness apps like crazy, but they're still gaining weight.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the obesity rate has continued to climb over the past decade. Nearly 38 percent of American adults are now obese, compared to 32 percent in 2003.
But here's the good news: Child obesity rates have hardly changed during that time. It has remained just above 17 percent, providing hope that younger generations will reverse the trend toward wider waistlines that health leaders have called an epidemic.
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"We are excited to see that our nationwide efforts to prevent childhood obesity have stopped the decades-long increase in childhood obesity rates, but we cannot be satisfied or accept these rates," Howell Wechsler, head of Alliance for a Healthier Generation, said in a statement. "Childhood obesity rates are still too high and the rates that we currently have will lead to many millions of cases of obesity-related diseases and astronomical health care costs."
Another notable trend identified in the report: Women are more likely to be obese than men. Thirty-eight percent of all women are obese, compared to 34 percent of men. And 42 percent of middle-aged women are obese, compared to 38 percent of men. The gender gap has widened in recent years, experts say.
African-American women are most at risk, with an obesity rate of 57 percent, compared to 46 percent of Hispanic women and 35 percent of white women. And yet, at 37.5 percent, the obesity rate for black men is only slightly higher than that for white men (34.5 percent).
"The biggest problem is that the obesity rates among low-income Americans and minorities are not improving," Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, told NPR.
However, the obesity rate was by far the lowest among Asians — just under 12 percent for both men and women.
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