A new study has revealed that since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the average American has put on 15 or more additional pounds without getting any taller. This comes as a worry as the US is already facing an obesity epidemic.
The research was released on August 3 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, in which 19,151 people were taken in for samples that underwent medical examinations and were interviewed at home.
The study showed that even 11-year-old kids "were not immune from this weight plague". The height of the girls remained steady, but they grew seven pounds heavier. On the other hand, the boys gained 13.5 pounds and an inch in height compared to two decades ago.
"We are not doing nearly enough to control and reverse the obesity epidemic and doing far too much to propagate it," says Dr. David Katz who directs the Yale University Prevention Research Center and is also the president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.
When tallied by race, the statistics show that on an average, blacks gained the most.
The report states that between 1988-1994 and 2011-2014, the average weight of men in the United States leapt from 181 pounds to 196 pounds, but their average height remained the same at about 5 feet, 9 inches.
Anthony Comuzzie, an obesity researcher and scientist with the department of genetics at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio explained that a "15- to 16-pound weight gain is fairly significant and typically would be consistent with a couple of points increase in body mass index."
"Increasing BMI is a good indicator of overall risk for a variety of diseases, including heart disease and diabetes," he added.
Comuzzie suggested that the availability of high calorie content food and less exercise is fuelling this trend.