Adult Obesity Prevalence Increased During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

In 2017–2018, 42.4 percent of U.S. adults experienced obesity, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. As the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic unfolded in 2020, studies using limited online surveys found evidence of weight gain among U.S. adults, suggesting that behavior changes during the pandemic exacerbated an already existing adult obesity epidemic. However, because the pandemic surveys did not represent the overall U.S. adult population, findings derived from them did not fully show how much obesity rates changed for adults during the pandemic.