Obesity affects more than one billion people worldwide

The global obesity epidemic continues its spiraling growth. In just thirty years, worldwide obesity rates have more than doubled for adults and quadrupled for children and adolescents. More than a billion people are obese today, or one in eight. This is the main result of a large study published by The Lancet, Friday 1^er March, three days before World Obesity Day, a pathology associated with numerous complications (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, etc.) and which, along with overweight, is the fifth cause of death in the world. According to the British Scientific Journal, 879 million adults and 159 million children and adolescents were obese in 2022; In 1990, they were 195 million and 31 million respectively.

Women represent the majority of adults affected (504 million, or 57%), but it is among men that the trend has progressed most rapidly in thirty years: for them, the prevalence has nearly tripled, while among women it has doubled. . Among children, obesity mainly affects boys (94 million, or 59%) and the increase in prevalence is comparable between the sexes – a factor of 4 for girls and 4.4 for boys.

Authors from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration – an international network for the study of noncommunicable diseases – estimated the evolution of obesity and underweight trends based on more than 3,600 studies covering 197 countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), they define obesity in adults as a body mass index (BMI, weight divided by the square of the height) greater than 30. They recognize that BMI is not an ideal indicator, as it does not take into account Consider the amount and distribution of body fat, but emphasize that it is widely used, allowing comparisons between countries.

Underweight is characterized by a BMI of less than 18.5. If it is one of the manifestations of malnutrition, it is not the most widely used indicator to measure food insecurity, but it allows to demonstrate, from the same database, the double burden of malnutrition.

“A Worldwide Problem”

“We expect to reach the one billion mark (of fat people) in 2030, but it arrived much faster,” Director of the WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety Francesco Branca said during a press conference presenting the data on Thursday, February 29. “Different forms of undernutrition coexist within countries, communities or families, and a child who is first affected by underweight may later be affected by obesity,”

He clarified, generally emphasizing that “Lack of Access to a Healthy Diet”.

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