--- title: National Institutes of Health: What to Do About Obese Baby Boomers description: Though aging baby boomers are smoking and drinking less, a new U.S. Census Bureau report shows the vast majority of baby boomers are overweight or obese, which may cause diabetes and arthritis, among other conditions canonical: https://time.com/2945095/the-vast-majority-of-baby-boomers-are-overweight-or-obese/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-01T18:14:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:01:10.905Z article:section: Health og:title: What To Do About 65+ Obesity og:description: Though aging baby boomers are smoking and drinking less, a new U.S. Census Bureau report shows the vast majority of baby boomers are overweight or obese, which may cause diabetes and arthritis, among other conditions og:url: https://time.com/2945095/the-vast-majority-of-baby-boomers-are-overweight-or-obese/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What To Do About 65+ Obesity twitter:description: Though aging baby boomers are smoking and drinking less, a new U.S. Census Bureau report shows the vast majority of baby boomers are overweight or obese, which may cause diabetes and arthritis, among other conditions twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Vast Majority of Baby Boomers Are Overweight or Obese > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=45dd43d8-1910-4256-91f8-aa10acc2e68a&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Truth About Fat [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jul 1, 2014 6:14 PM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jul 1, 2014 6:14 PM UTC Aging baby boomers are smoking and drinking less, but overweight and obesity are on the rise, according to a new [report](http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p23-212.pdf) from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s especially concerning when you consider the many other diseases and disabilities—including arthritis, type-2 diabetes, heart disease and hindered mobility—that can come with excess body weight. The percentage of overweight and obese Americans 65 and older has grown: [72% of older men and 67% of older women](http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p23-212.pdf) are now overweight or obese. Baby boomers started reaching age 65 in 2011, and the report, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, also shows many of these older Americans are not financially prepared to pay for long-term care in nursing homes. That’s concerning, since America’s aging population, which is now around 40 million, is estimated to double by 2050. What’s the best way to handle overweight and obesity in people 65-plus? “There are not many studies of weight loss among the elderly. It’s a rich and fertile area,” says Dr. Adam Bernstein, research director at the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute. “The prescription would not be the same for a middle-aged person or youth.” Bernstein, who was not involved in the report, says it is possible for older men and women to lose weight, though doctors are likely to immediately focus on the _consequences_ of excess body fat, like high blood pressure and erratic blood sugar. “If the clinician makes the determination a person is overweight and no other comorbid conditions, then what seems appropriate is a diet and exercise plan,” he says. Past [research](http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/05/baby-boomers-not-the-healthiest-generation/) published in the journal _JAMA Internal Medicine_ has shown the baby boomer generation has its share of pervasive health problems, including high rates of cholesterol and hypertension. The authors [concluded](http://www.hhnmag.com/display/HHN-news-article.dhtml?dcrPath=/templatedata/HF%5FCommon/NewsArticle/data/HHN/Magazine/2014/Jan/cover-story-baby-boomers) that there’s a need for policies that encourage prevention efforts and healthy-behavior promotion among boomers. This new report adds urgency to the call for better health among boomers. Indeed, the costs of _not_ taking action could be severe. The new Census Bureau report shows that the average cost of a private room in a nursing home in 2010 was $83,585 a year—and less than one fifth of older men and women have the finances to live in a home for more than three years. Medicaid covers long-term care for qualified, low-income seniors, but as the number of people in that group grows, the costs will hurt. “Most of the long-term care provided to older people today comes from unpaid family members and friends,” Richard Suzman, director of National Institute on Aging’s division of behavioral and social research, said [in a statement](http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2014/nia-30.htm). “Baby boomers had far fewer children than their parents. Combined with higher divorce rates and disrupted family structures, this will result in fewer family members to provide long-term care in the future.” The findings highlight the need to make healthy changes early. And if we want to cut long-term healthcare costs in the future, Americans need to get healthier. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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