Nine out of 10 US men aged over 60 years are now overweight, according to the first study to assess the long-term risk of piling on the pounds. The study ran from 1971 to 2001 and involved people aged between 30 and 59 at the beginning.

Furthermore, seven out of 10 women in the study were also overweight and at the end of the study one in three of both sexes was clinically obese. The study involved 4000 adults enrolled in an ongoing landmark study in Framingham, Massachusetts.



“National surveys and other studies have told us that the US has a major weight problem, but this study suggests that we could have an even more serious degree of overweight and obesity over the next few decades,” says Elizabeth Nabel, director of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the work, and co-chair of the NIH obesity research task force.



A 1999 to 2002 survey by the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suggested that 65% of US adults aged over 20 were either overweight or obese, with 30% being clinically obese.



“Our results, although not surprising, are worrisome,” says Ramachandran Vasan of Boston University School of Medicine, who led the new Framingham study. “If the trend continues, our country will continue to face substantial health problems related to excess weight.”



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