The Ozempic effect is finally showing up in obesity data |
For years, obesity rates in the US have gone in one direction: up. From the first year it was launched, Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index has found that the share of US adults reporting obesity has climbed and climbed, rising from 25.5 percent in 2008 to 39.9 percent in 2022. That survey caught the last leg of an epidemic that has been spreading for decades, with estimated obesity prevalence tripling over the past 60 years.
It’s not that the country hasn’t tried to fight weight gain. But from the $33 billion Americans spend each year on weight loss products and services to government efforts like first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign or Make America Healthy Again, little has worked. Many doctors and patients came to believe the rise in obesity may be all but biologically inescapable, despite the grave health risks that accompany it.
But maybe not. According to the latest results from Gallup’s survey, self-reported obesity has started to fall, declining by nearly 3 points to 37 percent in 2025. The self-reporting part is an important limitation — people’s reporting of their weight tends to be imprecise — and we’ll need more definitive proof from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be sure, but it’s some of the earliest evidence that the US may finally be turning a corner on one of the biggest health crises of the modern age.
And the main reason it appears to be happening isn’t because weight-loss experts have stumbled upon a new diet that always works (we haven’t and probably never will) or because we’ve managed to ban all unhealthy junk food (we haven’t........