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America Fatter, More Stressed Out Since Obama Took Office

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First lady Michelle Obama has been encouraging healthy eating and exercise for years, but her efforts have failed to make a dent in the national obesity rate, which has increased since President Barack Obama took office.

According to the results of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, released Wednesday, the obesity rate in the U.S. increased 2.5 percentage points from 25.5 percent in 2008 to 28.0 percent in 2015.

While the national obesity rate is on the rise, millennials (those born between 1980 and 1996) are the one generation that has seen its obesity rate decline. Since 2008, the obesity rate among millennials has declined some 0.6 percentage points from 20.7 percent in 2008 to 20.1 percent in 2015. The non-Millennial generations, on the other hand, have seen their obesity rate increase by 3.8 percentage points in that same timeframe, from 28.7 percent to 32.5 percent.

Obesity, according to Gallup, is one of five “key indicators” of “well-being” in the country. The others indicators look at the rates of significant daily stress, diabetes, smoking and exercise.

“Americans have major well-being problems — and some are causing significant harm to the country’s economy,” Gallup concludes on its findings across the five categories.

Along with the increased proportion of Americans donning “plus” sizes, the level of significant stress Americans experience on a daily basis has also increased since 2008, from 38.8 percent to 40.0 percent in 2015.

Additionally, the percentage of Americans with diabetes has also grown over the past few years from 10.6 percent in 2008 to 11.4 percent in 2015.

Meanwhile, nearly half of Americans are not exercising a bare minimum of 30 minutes a day, three times a week. To be sure, according to Gallup, the percentage of Americans exercising has increased 1.3 percentage points since 2008 from 51.4 percent to 52.7 percent.

While more Americans are fat, stressed, have diabetes and nearly half fail to exercise, fewer Americans are smoking. Gallup reports that the percentage of Americans who smoke has declined 2.6 percentage points, from 21.1 percent to 18.5 percent.

Gallup argues that these societal maladies are not without costs to the economy, namely increased healthcare costs, reduced productivity, and absenteeism in the workplace.

Although Gallup paints a bleak picture of American well-being in recent years, the polling outfit points to millennials as a hope for the future, as not only are the less likely to be obese, but they are also less likely to have diabetes (2.4 percent) and a little more likely to exercise (57.1 percent).

Gallup’s results are based on telephone interviews conducted from conducted from Jan. 2-Dec. 30, 2008 among a random sample of 341,650 adults and Jan. 2-Dec. 29, 2015 among a sample of 174,387 adults. The national sample has a margin of error of +/- 0.2 percentage points, the generation margin of error is +/-0.5 percentage points.

Caroline May