Recent dynamics suggest selected countries catching up to US obesity.

BACKGROUND

The United States has been the country with the highest body mass indexes (BMIs; in kg/m(2)) at higher centiles, but research that compares the United States with other nations is lacking.

OBJECTIVE

To present a picture of global obesity and examine the shifts in BMI in children, I examined BMI data for men and women at the upper ends of the BMI distributions in Australia, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

DESIGN

As representative data, I used directly measured weight and height for children aged 6-18 y and for men and women aged > or =19 y. Quantile regression analysis with BMI was used to determine the outcome, and the coefficients of age, age squared, and age cubed represented the explanatory variables plotted to determine mean BMI at the 95th centile for each age group. Overweight and obesity measures across all selected countries, with the use of nationally representative surveys and the 95th centile mean BMI, were determined.

RESULTS

Among women, much larger increases were found in mean BMI at the 95th percentile in Australia (+5.7 BMI units) and the United Kingdom (+3.7 BMI units) than in the United States (+2.7 BMI units) in one-half the time. In contrast, among children, younger Chinese children experienced the largest increase. For example, the mean BMI at the 95th centile for 6-y-old Chinese children is 24.8 (a 5.0 increase), which is 2.6 BMI units more than the BMI at the 95th centile for children in the United States.

CONCLUSIONS

Among children, BMIs for US children at the 95th centile are below those in China, whereas among women, Australian and UK women are rapidly approaching BMIs found in US women.