The number of Americans living with obesity is expected to rise by 19 million and affect nearly 126 million people by 2035, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Wednesday.
Researchers found that the number of American adults living with obesity has more than doubled over the past 30 years, increasing from 34.7 million in 1990 to an estimated 107 million American adults in 2022. New findings suggest that this upward trend is expected to continue.
“Our projections indicate that almost half of US adults will be living with obesity by 2035,” Dr. Catherine O. Johnson, lead research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and co-author of the study, told ABC News.
In the study, researchers reviewed the body mass index of over 11 million Americans across all states.
The findings showed that women were more affected than men overall and that Southern states had a higher number of people living with obesity.
Adults ages 45 to 64 had the highest rates of obesity, while younger women under 35 experienced the fastest rise in numbers in recent years.
Black women had the highest rates of obesity in 2022, the study found, followed by Hispanic women.
The disparities among different races and ethnicities point to how factors like income, access to healthcare, food availability and exercise opportunities may be driving them, experts say.
The findings of the research also highlight that obesity affects Americans nationwide and will continue to impact more families each year.
The study did not primarily look at GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which have surged in popularity in recent years. Prior research has shown that the drug may have led to a slight downturn in obesity rates in 2024.