The impact was most severe in the Caribbean, where by 1600 Native American populations on most islands had plummeted by more than 99 percent. Across the Americas, populations fell by 50 percent to 95 percent by 1650. The disease component of the Columbian Exchange was decidedly one-sided.
In the United States, the percentage of children and adolescents affected by obesity has more than tripled since the 1970s.1 Data from 2015–2016 show that nearly 1 in 5 school-age children and young people aged 6 to 19 years in the United States has obesity.2
