Posted on 12/10/2024 7:51:09 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The United States is set to fall in worldwide life expectancy ranking by mid-century, with widespread obesity adversely affecting people’s health, according to a recent study.
The peer-reviewed study, published in The Lancet on Dec. 7, forecasted the life expectancy for Americans between 2022 and 2050 after taking into account the effect of more than 350 diseases and injuries.
Study authors said overall life expectancy is projected to increase from 78.3 years in 2022 to 79.9 years in 2035, and to 80.4 years in 2050. The study said the increase “is forecasted to be modest compared with that in other countries around the world.”
As a result, the United States’ global rank in terms of life expectancy is projected to decline from 49 in 2022 to 66 in 2050 among 204 nations and territories. In addition, ranking in terms of health-adjusted life expectancy, which estimates the average number of years a person lives in good health, is projected to fall from 80 to 108.
Despite the slight increase in life expectancy, health improvements are expected to slow down in the nation as a result of obesity issues, according to professor Christopher J.L. Murray, co-senior author of the study and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
Rising obesity rates are a “serious risk factor to many chronic diseases and forecasted to leap to levels never before seen,” he said a Dec. 5 statement from the institute.
“The rise in obesity and overweight rates in the U.S., with IHME forecasting over 260 million people affected by 2050, signals a public health crisis of unimaginable scale,” he added.
Researchers estimated that if authorities succeed in eliminating risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar by 2050, the United States will succeed in preventing the deaths of 12.4 million people.
Life expectancy ranking of American females is forecast to drop from 51 in 2022 to 74 in 2050. For men, the ranking is expected to fall from 51 to 65.
“These lower rankings put the U.S. below nearly all high-income and some middle-income countries,” the institute said.
Researchers pointed out that the findings “highlight the alarming trajectory of health challenges in the USA, which, if left unaddressed, could lead to a reversal of the health progress made over the past three decades for some US states and a decline in global health standing for all states.”
Between 1990 and 2021, mortality rates for several leading causes of death, such as stroke, cancer, and ischemic heart disease, declined nationwide, which caused life expectancy to improve during those three decades.
The study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The study’s categorization of excess weight as a key risk factor to good health comes as the United States is facing an obesity crisis.
More than two in five American adults are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimates that more than 100 million Americans are obese and more than 22 million have severe obesity.
Obesity rates have skyrocketed over the past decades, jumping from 30.5 percent in 1999–2000 to nearly 42 percent during 2017–2020, with rates of severe obesity almost doubling.
“Many adults with obesity have other serious chronic diseases. For example, 58 percent of U.S. adults with obesity have high blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease. Also, approximately 23 percent of U.S. adults with obesity have diabetes,” the agency says.
During a hearing in December 2023, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) highlighted the issue of obesity among children, pointing out the link between having excess weight and getting diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
The senator called for banning the advertising of junk food targeting children, saying that such a move could aid in reducing obesity rates among kids.
“For decades, we have allowed large corporations in the food and beverage industry to entice children to eat foods loaded with sugar, salt, and saturated fat,“ he said. ”This situation has led to an addiction crisis, with ultra-processed foods being as addictive as alcohol and cigarettes.”
In August, former President Donald Trump, now the president-elect, said that he plans on setting up a panel of experts to investigate the reasons for surging childhood health issues, including obesity.
In a video from September, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, said chemicals in the soil and ultra-processed foods as contributing factors to the country’s obesity situation.
The United States’ food supply is “loaded with high fructose corn syrup and seed oils and hundreds of artificial additives and flavors and processed carbohydrates that don’t exist in nature and that are banned in other countries,” Kennedy said.
Life expectancy is mostly a genetic thing. Unless you live the worst of lifestyles, how long you will live will mostly depend on your genetics.
By that, what the report is saying is that the US will be primarily populated by people with short lifespans.
RFK will be confirmed. Everyone agrees with at least one thing he talks about. Different things, but he has enough support.
That's supposed to make people accept higher taxes.
I’m sitting in a theater rehearsing.
Almost everyone on stage is morbidly obese and leftist.
“RFK will be confirmed. Everyone agrees with at least one thing he talks about. Different things, but he has enough support.”
Once RFK starts talking about how meat, red meat, beef in particular, is about the HEALTHIEST FOOD one can eat...the Left will give him the full Trump Treatment. Just watch!
They got most of the population chowing down on processed poison on a daily basis. None of it is good...
One may come from a family with a history of longevity, but if they eat, drink or smoke excessively - they are gonna die sooner rather than later.
Right, the worst of lifestyles.
Much of if is due to a lack of knowledge of how to eat well. That’s probably most of the problems, because people who ate well in the past tended to live long even if they smoked.
Are we still the only country that counts newborn deaths in our life expectancy figures? Apparently, other countries do not add newborn deaths until the age of 6 weeks, which of course, skews the statistics. We also include miscarriages and still births, but other countries don’t.
I register your observation as a positive ;-)
It’s a shame that there’s not an accelerator...
I didn’t realize that, that certainly would make a big difference.
After the Lancet’s stand on c19, they can take a flying leap.
Celebrate diversity! (And an invasion of illegal aliens from south of our border)
Well what can you expect with the clot shot still around?
The US ranks #10 out of 200 countries in obesity (42%), but junk food is not the direct reason, which is too many calories relative to those used, with progressive reduction of the latter corespondent to the rise in obesity. A person hiking mountains for days, all day, almost nonstop could eat lots of junk food without becoming obese. Of course, a steady diet mainly of such will mean one is hardly fit to hike much of anywhere.
Diseases of abundance.
People are obese because food is cheap and no exercise is required to life a normal life.
You can “drive up” to do about anything, or do it on the Internet.
It is hard to incentivize most people to exercise and eat in a healthy way.
There is no other major country were food is as cheap as it is in the United States... although that may be changing as our government has initiated massive inflation.
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