An unprecedented study by Public Health France, carried out over 20 years, shows that excess weight has increased significantly among the French between 1996 and 2017. Up to doubling, for the specific case of obesity. In its latest epidemiological bulletin, published on Tuesday, September 10, Public Health France delivers the results based on telephone surveys, carried out on a sample of 124,541 representative people, aged 18 to 75. Among them, 55,356 men and 69,185 women.
The study shows two major differences between the evolution of corpulence in men and women: it is greater in men, but it seems to be stabilizing, or even declining, while the increase continues in women.
The figures are therefore stabilizing for men, after a sharp rise. The proportion of people declaring themselves overweight first increased between 1996 and 2008, rising from 40% to 48% respectively before recently stabilizing at around 48% to 50%. The same goes for obesity, which affected 7% of men in 1996, then exceeded 14% in 2016, before falling back to 13% in 2017. In women, on the contrary, corpulence has continued to increase steadily. For overweight, the increase continues, from less than 25% in 1996 to 39% in 2017. Declared obesity, less than 6% in 1996, stood at 14% in 2017.
More risk factors in women
How can this difference be explained? “We can draw a parallel between the levels of physical activity that have recently deteriorated in women while they have remained stable in men,” notes Charlotte Verdot, an epidemiologist at Santé publique France. “There is a lack of data related to age: we know that there can be a shift in women at menopause,” also points out Karine Clément, professor of nutrition at Sorbonne University and director of a research unit at Inserm.
“Obesity is a multifactorial disease, which reflects the evolution of our society but can also have links with social vulnerability,” adds the researcher. Factors linked to “stress, endocrine disruptors, biological mechanisms that lead to weight gain in some people” are not all fully understood, according to her.
Overweight is growing everywhere in the West
This growth in corpulence “is found in all Western countries”, underlines Charlotte Verdot. It is explained in particular by changes in lifestyle, with an “increase in sedentary lifestyle, a decrease in physical activity, more junk food”… Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, certain cancers or premature death, as well as certain infectious diseases as was highlighted during the Covid-19 crisis. The French figures are still far from those of our neighbors across the Atlantic, however, since in 2016, obesity reached 40% of women and 35% of men in the United States.
“Declared” corpulence was estimated by calculating a body mass index (BMI), dividing the declared weight in kilograms by the square of the declared height in meters. Overweight is defined by a BMI greater than or equal to 25, obesity by a BMI greater than or equal to 30. In April 2023, Martine Laville, professor of nutrition at the University of Lyon, proposed in a report submitted to the government 40 very concrete avenues to combat obesity. Among them, developing an attractive school catering offer for students, particularly in priority neighborhoods, or integrating the identification of overweight and obesity into the new prevention consultation.