It’s no secret that the U.S. population’s waistline has been getting bigger, but a new study points to some alarming findings.
While the average American has gained about one pound each year since the mid-1990s, Latinos in 2010 were 1.2 times as likely to be obese than Non-Hispanic Whites, according to a recent NewsTaco.com article.
According to the study, done by the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. The average American man weighed 194.7 pounds in 2006 — up from 181 pounds in 1994. The average American woman weighed 165 pounds — up from 154.
Hispanics, however, showed more troubling statistics:
- 78 percent of Mexican American women are overweight or obese, compared to 60.3 percent of the non-Hispanic White women.
- Mexican American children were 1.4 times more likely to be overweight as Non- Hispanic White Children in 2007
- Mexican American women were 40% more likely to be overweight, compared to Non-Hispanic Whites from 2007-2010.
- In Texas, where more than 55 percent of the state’s population is expected to be Hispanic by 2040, 75 percent of Latinos were overweight or obese as of 2009.
- In Colorado, nearly 41 percent of Hispanic adults are overweight and 25 percent are obese. That’s in spite of the Centers for Disease Control considering Colorado the fittest state in the nation.
Diabetes is being seen more prominently among younger Latinos, who are more overweight than non-Hispanic children. According to the Leadership for Healthy Communities organization, 38.2 percent of Hispanic children ages up to age 18 were overweight in May 2010, compared with 31.7 percent of all children.
