Is waist circumference per body mass index rising differentially across the United States, England, China and Mexico?
Open accessAbstract
Background/objectives Little is known about whether waist circumference (WC) has increased disproportionately relative to body mass index (BMI) around the world.Subjects/methods Data came from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988-1994 and 2007-2010), Health Survey for England (1992-1993 and 2008-2009); the Mexican Nutrition Survey (1999) and the Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHNS 2012); and the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1993 and 2011). Country- and sex-stratified (for the United States, also race-/ethnicity-stratified) multivariable linear regressions were used to estimate mean difference in WC over time relative to BMI at specified overweight and obesity cutoff points, adjusting for age and survey year.Results Although mean WC and BMI shifted upward over time in all age-sex subpopulations in all four countries, trends in overweight prevalence were less consistent. However, WC relative to BMI increased at varying magnitudes across all countries and subpopulations, except US Black men. The magnitude of increase was largest for women in the youngest age group (20-29 years), particularly for women in Mexico (+6.6 cm, P<0.0001) and China (+4.6 cm, P<0.0001) (holding BMI constant at 25 kg/m(2)). For men, the increase was primarily evident among Chinese men (+4.8 cm, P<0.0001).Conclusions WC has increased disproportionately over time relative to overall body mass across the United States, England, Mexico and China, particularly among young women, with the largest increases occurring in the middle-income countries of Mexico and China. These patterns are potentially a cause for concern especially for countries undergoing rapid economic and nutritional transitions.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Abdominal adiposity, which produces the largest metabolic harms, has increased to a greater extent than overall weight in many nations, especially in younger women and certain middle-income countries.
“Abdominal adiposity, which produces largest metabolic harms, has also increased to a great extent than overall weight in many nations, especially in younger women and certain middle-income countries.42”
From Dietary and Policy Priorities for Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, and Obesity: A Comprehensive Review (2016) · cites this paper as [42]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Food, nutrition, physical activity, and the prevention of cancer: a global perspective
Marmot, M. G., Atinmo, T., Byers, T., Chen, J., Hirohata, T., Jackson, A., James, W., Kolonel, L. N., Kumanyika, S., Leitzmann, C., et al. (2008) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.45-5024 · Cited by 5,365 · see citing works
Finucane, M. M., Stevens, G. A., Cowan, M. J., Danaei, G., Lin, J. K., Paciorek, C. J., Singh, G. M., Gutierrez, H. R., Lu, Y., Bahalim, A. N., et al. (2011) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(10)62037-5 · Cited by 4,050 · see citing works
Pathophysiology of human visceral obesity: an update
Tchernof, A., & Després, J.-P. (2013) · Physiological Reviews · doi:10.1152/physrev.00033.2011 · Cited by 2,583 · see citing works
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
Rothwell, C. J. (2009) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-0-387-78665-0_6177 · Cited by 2,087 · see citing works
Ultra‐processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system
Monteiro, C. A., Moubarac, J. ‐., Cannon, G., Ng, S. W., & Popkin, B. (2013) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/obr.12107 · Cited by 1,827 · see citing works
Self-citationAbdominal obesity and the metabolic syndrome: contribution to global cardiometabolic risk
Després, J.-P., Lemieux, I., Bergeron, J., Pibarot, P., Mathieu, P., Larose, E., Rodés-Cabau, J., Bertrand, O. F., & Poirier, P. (2008) · Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology · doi:10.1161/atvbaha.107.159228 · Cited by 1,589 · see citing works
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
(2008) · Encyclopedia of Epidemiology · doi:10.4135/9781412953948.n305 · Cited by 1,341 · see citing works
Deurenberg, P., Deurenberg‐Yap, M., & Gurrici, S. (2002) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1046/j.1467-789x.2002.00065.x · Cited by 1,329 · see citing works
Rosito, G. A., Massaro, J. M., Hoffmann, U., Ruberg, F. L., Mahabadi, A. A., Vasan, R. S., O’Donnell, C. J., & Fox, C. S. (2008) · Circulation · doi:10.1161/circulationaha.107.743062 · Cited by 1,021 · see citing works
Popkin, B. M., Du, S., Zhai, F., & Zhang, B. (2009) · International Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1093/ije/dyp322 · Cited by 962 · see citing works
Self-citationTime use and physical activity: a shift away from movement across the globe
Ng, S. W., & Popkin, B. M. (2012) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/j.1467-789x.2011.00982.x · Cited by 925 · see citing works
Self-citationFlegal, K. M., Shepherd, J. A., Looker, A. C., Graubard, B. I., Borrud, L. G., Ogden, C. L., Harris, T. B., Everhart, J. E., & Schenker, N. (2009) · The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition · doi:10.3945/ajcn.2008.26847 · Cited by 819 · see citing works
Wei, M., Gaskill, S. P., Haffner, S. M., & Stern, M. P. (1997) · Obesity Research · doi:10.1002/j.1550-8528.1997.tb00278.x · Cited by 481 · see citing works
Ismail, I., Keating, S. E., Baker, M. K., & Johnson, N. A. (2012) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/j.1467-789x.2011.00931.x · Cited by 345 · see citing works
Cohort Profile: The Health Survey for England
Mindell, J., Biddulph, J. P., Hirani, V., Stamatakis, E., Craig, R., Nunn, S., & Shelton, N. (2012) · International Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1093/ije/dyr199 · Cited by 312 · see citing works
Increasing Trends in Waist Circumference and Abdominal Obesity among U.S. Adults
Li, C., Ford, E. S., McGuire, L. C., & Mokdad, A. H. (2007) · Obesity · doi:10.1038/oby.2007.505 · Cited by 288 · see citing works
New dynamics in global obesity facing low‐ and middle‐income countries
Popkin, B. M., & Slining, M. M. (2013) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/obr.12102 · Cited by 284 · see citing works
Self-citationEncuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición 2012:diseño y cobertura
Martínez, M. R., Shamah‐Levy, T., & Franco-Núñez, A. (2013) · Salud Pública de México · doi:10.21149/spm.v55s2.5132 · Cited by 245 · see citing works
Popkin, B. M. (2013) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/obr.12120 · Cited by 200 · see citing works
Self-citationCardiovascular Disease Under the Influence of Excess Visceral Fat
Després, J. (2007) · Critical Pathways in Cardiology A Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine · doi:10.1097/hpc.0b013e318057d4c9 · Cited by 199 · see citing works
Fernández, J. R., Heo, M., Heymsfield, S. B., Pierson, R. N., Pi-Sunyer, X., Wang, Z. M., Wang, J., Hayes, M. R., Allison, D. B., & Gallagher, D. (2003) · American Journal of Clinical Nutrition · doi:10.1093/ajcn/77.1.71 · Cited by 167 · see citing works
[National Health and Nutrition Survey 2012: design and coverage].
Martínez, M. R., Shamah‐Levy, T., Franco-Núñez, A., Villalpando, S., Cuevas‐Nasú, L., Gutiérrez, J. P., & Rivera, J. Á. (2013) · PubMed · Cited by 145 · see citing works
Abdominal Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: Is Inflammation the Missing Link?
Després, J. (2012) · Canadian Journal of Cardiology · doi:10.1016/j.cjca.2012.06.004 · Cited by 133 · see citing works
Romaguera, D., Ängquist, L. H., Du, H., Jakobsen, M. U., Forouhi, N. G., Halkjær, J., Feskens, E. J. M., van der A, D. L., Masala, G., Steffen, A., et al. (2010) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011588 · Cited by 112 · see citing works
One million skinfolds: secular trends in the fatness of young people 1951–2004
Olds, T. (2009) · European Journal of Clinical Nutrition · doi:10.1038/ejcn.2009.7 · Cited by 77 · see citing works
Razak, F. A., Corsi, D. J., & Subramanian, S. V. (2013) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001367 · Cited by 76 · see citing works
Methods of the National Nutrition Survey 1999
Resano-Pérez, E., Ramírez, I. M., Shamah‐Levy, T., et al. (2003) · Salud Pública de México · doi:10.1590/s0036-36342003001000012 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Casas, Y. G., Schiller, B. C., DeSouza, C. A., & Seals, D. R. (2001) · The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition · doi:10.1093/ajcn/73.1.13 · Cited by 68 · see citing works
Changes in waist circumference relative to body mass index in Chinese adults, 1993–2009
Stern, D., Smith, L. P., Zhang, B., Gordon-Larsen, P., & Popkin, B. M. (2014) · International Journal of Obesity · doi:10.1038/ijo.2014.74 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Self-citationMamtani, M., Kulkarni, H. R., Dyer, T. D., Almasy, L. A., Mahaney, M. C., Duggirala, R., Comuzzie, A. G., Blangero, J., & Curran, J. E. (2013) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059153 · Cited by 46 · see citing works
Alemán-Mateo, H., Lee, S. Y., Javed, F., Thornton, J., Heymsfield, S. B., Pierson, R. N., Pi-Sunyer, X., Wang, Z. M., Wang, J., & Gallagher, D. (2009) · The journal of nutrition health & aging · doi:10.1007/s12603-009-0252-1 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
Changes in the Obesity Phenotype Within Canadian Children and Adults, 1981 to 2007–2009
Janssen, I., Shields, M. E., Craig, C. L., et al. (2011) · Obesity · doi:10.1038/oby.2011.122 · Cited by 40 · see citing works
Albrecht, S. S., Barquera, S., & Popkin, B. M. (2014) · American Journal of Human Biology · doi:10.1002/ajhb.22573 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Self-citationOlivares, J., Wang, J., Yu, W. L., Pereg, V., Weil, R. M., Kovacs, B., Gallagher, D., & Pi-Sunyer, X. (2007) · Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology · doi:10.1177/193229680700100619 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Mozaffarian, D. (2016) · Circulation · doi:10.1161/circulationaha.115.018585 · Cited by 2,216 · see citing works
Ross, R., Neeland, I. J., Yamashita, S., Shai, I., Seidell, J., Magni, P., Santos, R. D., Arsenault, B., Cuevas, A., Hu, F. B., et al. (2020) · Nature Reviews Endocrinology · doi:10.1038/s41574-019-0310-7 · Cited by 1,966 · see citing works
Popkin, B. M., Du, S., Green, W. D., Beck, M. A., Algaith, T., Herbst, C. H., Alsukait, R. F., Alluhidan, M., Alazemi, N., & Shekar, M. (2020) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/obr.13128 · Cited by 1,150 · see citing works
Self-citationObesity and the food system transformation in <scp>Latin America</scp>
Popkin, B. M., & Reardon, T. (2018) · Obesity Reviews · doi:10.1111/obr.12694 · Cited by 629 · see citing works
Self-citationNutrition Transition and the Global Diabetes Epidemic
Popkin, B. M. (2015) · Current Diabetes Reports · doi:10.1007/s11892-015-0631-4 · Cited by 479 · see citing works
Self-citationPopkin, B. M. (2017) · Nutrition Reviews · doi:10.1093/nutrit/nuw064 · Cited by 341 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Albrecht, S. S., Gordon-Larsen, P., Stern, D., & Popkin, B. M.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Corresponding author
- Albrecht, S S
- Venue
- European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
- Published
- 2015-05-06
- Volume
- 69
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1306-1312
- ISSN
- 0954-3007 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-5640
- PMC
- PMC4966607
- OpenAlex
- W1515000266
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 5.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01HL108427)
- Fogarty International Center (D43TW009077)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD030880, R01 HD 30880, P2CHD050924)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Obesity, Physical Activity, Diet
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes, Cardiovascular Risks, and Lipoproteins
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Body Composition Measurement Techniques
- Keywords
- waist circumference, body mass index, abdominal obesity, overweight prevalence, obesity trends, sex differences, age differences, young women, middle-income countries, cross-national comparison, United States, England, Mexico, China
- MeSH terms
- Adult, China, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, United Kingdom, Humans, Male, Mexico, Middle Aged, Nutrition Surveys, Obesity, United States, Body Mass Index, Prevalence, Overweight, Waist Circumference, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
