PARIS
Nearly
a third of adults and a quarter of children today are overweight,
according to a report Thursday that said no country has turned the tide
of obesity since 1980.
Traditionally associated with an
affluent lifestyle, the problem is expanding worldwide, with more than
62 percent of overweight people now in developing nations, said the
report.
There are some 2.1 billion overweight or obese people in the world today — up from 857 million 33 years earlier.
Among
the most striking statistics: more than half the population of Tonga is
now classified as obese — a dangerous level of overweight — as are more
than 50 percent of women in Kuwait, Libya, Qatar and Samoa.
The
United States also stands out with nearly 75 percent of men and 60
percent of women overweight or obese, according to the Global Burden of
Disease Study published in The Lancet medical journal.
"Obesity
is an issue affecting people of all ages and incomes, everywhere," said
Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington Institute
for Health Metrics and Evaluation, who helped collate the data for the
period 1980 to 2013.
"In the last three decades, not
one country has achieved success in reducing obesity rates, and we
expect obesity to rise steadily as incomes rise in low- and
middle-income countries in particular, unless urgent steps are taken to
address this public health crisis."
One is considered overweight with a weight-to-height (BMI) ratio of 25 or over, and obese from 30 upward.
A
staggering 671 million people now fall within the obese category, said
the study — 78 million of them in the United States, which accounts for
five percent of the world's population, but more than a tenth of its
grossly overweight people.
China and India, with much
larger populations, trailed 2nd and 3rd in the top 10 obese countries
with 46 million and 30 million people respectively, followed by Russia,
Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Overweight
people are more prone to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes,
osteoarthritis and kidney disease, and the soaring numbers are placing a
heavy burden on health care systems, said the study.
Excess
body weight is estimated to have caused 3.4 million deaths in 2010, and
previous research has warned that an unabated rise in obesity could
start eating away at life expectancy.
The study, based
on data from 188 countries, said the prevalence of obese and overweight
adults grew by 28 percent worldwide, and by nearly 50 percent for
children.
For men, the increase was from 29 to 37 percent, and for women from 30 to 38 percent of the population.
Fat child, fat adult?
The
study authors expressed concern that nearly a quarter of kids in
developed countries and 13 percent in developing ones were overweight or
obese — up from 16 percent and eight percent in 1980.
Thirteen percent of American children are obese, almost 30 percent if you include overweight — up from 19 percent in 1980.
"Particularly
high rates of child and adolescent obesity were seen in Middle Eastern
and North African countries, notably among girls," the study authors
noted.
Other regional differences included a slower
rate of increase in developed countries, but fast expanding waistlines
in the Middle East, North Africa, Central America and Pacific and
Caribbean Islands — regions where many countries' overweight rates
exceed 44 percent.
Fast gains were measured in Britain and Australia.
Women are heavier in developing countries and men in developed ones, said the study.
The
World Health Organisation aims to halt the rise in obesity by 2025, a
target the study authors said appeared "very ambitious and unlikely to
be attained without concerted action and further research".
One
solution, said Klim McPherson from Oxford University, was to return to
the BMI levels of 1980 — which would mean an eight percent drop in
consumption across the UK alone, at a cost to the food industry of some
8.7 billion pounds (11 billion euros) per year.
"The solution has to be mainly political," he wrote in a comment on the study.
"Where
is the international will to act decisively in a way that might
restrict economic growth in a competitive world, for the public's
health? Nowhere yet."
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