A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 37.7% of U.S. adults were obese as of 2014. That’s up from 34.9% two years earlier.
From 2011 through 2014, an estimated 36.5% of Americans ages 20 and older had a body mass index of at least 30, putting them over the threshold for obesity. The prevalence was higher for women (38.3%) than for men (34.3%), the CDC data show.
For the most part, the older Americans got, the more likely they were to become obese. Younger adults in their 20s and 30s had a comparatively low rate of obesity — 32.3%. For middle-aged people in their 40s and 50s, that figure rose to 40.2%, then dropped slightly to 37% for older adults ages 60 and above. The difference between those last two age groups wasn’t statistically significant.