It is estimated in a recent study that 42 percent of Americans are predicted to over weight or obese by 2030.
The CDC’s Weight of the Nation conference released it’s findings and will be highlighted in a four-part HBO documentary airing next week.
Cheap and easily available calorie dense food and sedentary lifestyles are largely to blame.
The stress on the health care system could be 550 billion dollars in additional medical expenditures.
Finkelstein and co-authors estimate that 11% of the population will be severely obese by 2030. Severe obesity is defined as a body mass index over 40 or being roughly 100 pounds overweight. Obese people have shorter life expectancies and greater lifetime medical costs, “suggesting that future healthcare costs may continue to increase even if obesity prevalence levels off,” wrote the authors.
“Those individuals have much greater risk of early mortality, diabetes, heart disease,” said Finkelstein. “They’re much, much more expensive and they’re on the rise, partly because 50 years ago, it was really, really hard to weigh that much. You’d have to eat all the time.”
