Nutrition Science and Everyday Application - beta v 0.1

Obesity Epidemic: Causes and Solutions
Since the 1980s, the prevalence of obesity in the United States has increased dramatically.
Data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show rising obesity across
the nation, state-by-state. 1
Figure 7.17. Each year since 1990, the CDC has published maps of the United States in which
states are color-coded based on the percentage of their population estimated to be obese. The
maps show a clear increase in the prevalence of obesity between 1990 and 2010.
The methods used by the CDC to collect the data changed in 2011, so we can’t make
direct comparisons between the periods before and after that change, but the trend has
continued. Every year, more and more people in the U.S. are obese.
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