Obesity is emerging as a greater threat to public health than smoking, a U.S. study suggests.
The largest ongoing health survey interviewed more than 3.5 million American adults every year from 1993 to 2008.
As smoking rates tailed off in the U.S., the proportion of smokers among American adults fell from 22.7 per cent in 1993 to 18 per cent in 2008, while obesity rates rose from 14.5 per cent to 26.7 per cent over the same time period.
“This study estimated the overall burden of smoking and obesity over time and results indicate that because of the marked increase in the proportion of obese people, obesity has become an equal, if not greater, contributor to the burden of disease than smoking,” Haomiao Jia of Columbia University and Dr. Erica Lubetkin of the City University of New York, concluded in the February issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Such data are important for setting targets to reduce health risks of obesity, they said.
The study was based on interviews and calculations of the number of “quality-adjusted life years” (QALYs) lost to obesity and smoking.
