Three-Quarters of American Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese

The study, published on Thursday in The Lancet, reveals the dramatic rise of obesity rates nationwide since 1990, when just over 50% of adults were overweight or obese, and shows how more people are becoming overweight or obese at younger ages than in the past.

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The chart above shows the obesity prevalence % for different age ranges. The chart is close to the peak at 44+% for the 60 to 64-year-olds and drops consistently to just over 20% at 80.  

The paper defined "overweight" adults as those with a body mass index at or over 25, and "obese" adults as those with a B.M.I. at or over 30. The authors acknowledged that B.M.I. is an imperfect measure, but from a scientific perspective, experts said, B.M.I. is correlated with other measures of body fat and is a practical tool for studying it at a population level.