Report: 164 Million Obese Adults by 2030

At least the USA is progressing in one domain.

Half of U.S. adults will be obese by 2030 if current trends continue, a new report shows.

About one in three adults in the U.S. are obese today. That figure will rise to half of American adults by 2030 if little is done to address the obesity epidemic, Columbia University researcher Claire Wang, PhD, said today at a news briefing in London.

With those numbers will likely come higher rates of chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and some types of cancer.

"Our projections find that rising obesity is going to result in increases in many of these chronic diseases which are disabling and expensive to treat," Wang said. "We have to act fast."

The briefing highlighted a special obesity edition of the The Lancet, published online today.

Impact of Increase in Obesity

Wang says expenditures to treat obesity-related diseases will cost the U.S. health care system up to an extra $66 billion each year by 2030, if the projections become reality.

Wang and colleagues from Columbia University and England's University of Oxford constructed a mathematical model to project obesity rates in the U.S. and U.K. over the next two decades.

If, as they predict, 164 million Americans are obese by 2030, Wang says the health care burden will include:

An additional 8 million cases diabetes
6.8 million additional cases of heart disease and stroke
Over 0.5 million cases of cancer

Kudos, fatsos.