FIGURE 1.2 Not Yet Obese You probably know that more than half of all adults in the United States are overweight, so this chart—with only 21 percent of adults obese—may seem wrong. However, three facts explain why the data are accurate: (1) “Obese” is much heavier than overweight; (2) the average adult in this study was 34 years old (middle-aged and older adults are more often obese); and (3) one of the studies that provided much of the longitudinal data was in Finland, where rates of obesity are lower than in the United States.