Obesity rate dips slightly

The growing obesity epidemic in America has been a huge culprit in rising health care costs along with a host of growing health complications. But a recent report indicates some Americans are working to reverse the trend.

According to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily assessment of U.S. residents' health and well-being, the percentage of Americans who are at a normal weight is higher than those who are overweight — that's not counting those who are recognized as obese.

The study divides participants into groupings of those at a normal weight, those overweight and those who are obese and keeps tabs on the trends within those groups.

The latest index report shows that 36.6 percent of Americans are at a normal weight, 35.8 percent are overweight and 25.8 percent are categorized as obese.

For the last three years of the study, the number of people in the overweight category have held the highest statistic, and the obesity percentage continued to make a steady climb. But the report shows that even the numbers in the obese group downturned slightly.

If the trend continues, it could be a ray of hope for businesses that have faced astronomical health care costs due to high obesity rates. But even with this shred of good news, the fact still remains that more than 60 percent of the nation is overweight or obese. And it will take more than a few percentage point changes to translate into health care savings.

Obesity is the trigger for a number of serious, life-threatening and expensive health problems like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, gout and respiratory illnesses. And the more overweight a person is, the more likely they are to develop these complications.

Gallup reports that the majority of U.S. cities must reduce obesity rates by at least 25 percent to even come close to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national goal of 15 percent. If that goal was met, the nation could be saving around $32.6 billion in health care costs, according to the report.

Moreover, if America’s fattest cities, including Dallas, Memphis, Houston and Baltimore, reduced their obesity rates to just over a quarter, which is around the national average, that would translate to $500 million annually in health care savings.

Either scenario could help take a major chunk away from CDC’s estimated $147 billion per year Americans pay in obesity related health care costs. And if Americans fail to slow the decades-long trend down, obesity-related costs are projected to balloon to $344 billion per year by 2018.

The data from the Well-Being Index is generated by over 1,000 daily interviews and provides real-time measurement and insights aimed to improve health, increase productivity and lower health care costs.