Health & Medicine
Worldwide Obesity Rates at an All-Time High: Over 2 Billion Overweight or Obese
Thomas Carannante
First Posted: May 29, 2014 01:59 PM EDT
According to a new global analysis, nearly one-third of the global population is now overweight or obese after unprecedented rises in such rates over the past three decades. No country has been able to stabilize obesity rates during that time period.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington conducted the global study that reviewed more than 1,700 studies and analyses from 188 countries between 1980 and 2013. The United States has nearly 13% of the world's overweight/obese population, which is higher than any other country.
Considered the first-of-its-kind analysis of trend data, the research provides an alert for public health in both developed and under-developed nations. The study, "Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013," was published in The Lancet on Thursday.
The Middle East and North Africa possessed the highest rates of overweight/obese people, with almost 60% of men and 65% of women being heavy. What was once a trend in earlier centuries is perhaps returning in the modern world: as people get richer their waistlines also increase in circumference. Poorer populations also experience an obesity trend, but it's alarming that wealthier and more educated persons are also getting fatter.
"It's pretty grim," said the study's lead author Christopher Murray, in this Washington Post article. "When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is."
Others who commented on the study cited modernization and children being the two biggest issues. The emergence and advancement of technology has created a sedentary population where people can essentially conduct a majority of their daily tasks by using a computer or a cell phone. Additionally, the world's children are getting fatter as a whole, which is not promising for the progression of the younger populations.
This study comes after the World Health Organization acknowledged the childhood obesity problem on May 15. In 2012, over 40 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese, and the WHO established a Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity to prevent that number from nearly doubling by 2025.
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First Posted: May 29, 2014 01:59 PM EDT
According to a new global analysis, nearly one-third of the global population is now overweight or obese after unprecedented rises in such rates over the past three decades. No country has been able to stabilize obesity rates during that time period.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington conducted the global study that reviewed more than 1,700 studies and analyses from 188 countries between 1980 and 2013. The United States has nearly 13% of the world's overweight/obese population, which is higher than any other country.
Considered the first-of-its-kind analysis of trend data, the research provides an alert for public health in both developed and under-developed nations. The study, "Global, regional, and national prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and adults during 1980-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013," was published in The Lancet on Thursday.
The Middle East and North Africa possessed the highest rates of overweight/obese people, with almost 60% of men and 65% of women being heavy. What was once a trend in earlier centuries is perhaps returning in the modern world: as people get richer their waistlines also increase in circumference. Poorer populations also experience an obesity trend, but it's alarming that wealthier and more educated persons are also getting fatter.
"It's pretty grim," said the study's lead author Christopher Murray, in this Washington Post article. "When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is."
Others who commented on the study cited modernization and children being the two biggest issues. The emergence and advancement of technology has created a sedentary population where people can essentially conduct a majority of their daily tasks by using a computer or a cell phone. Additionally, the world's children are getting fatter as a whole, which is not promising for the progression of the younger populations.
This study comes after the World Health Organization acknowledged the childhood obesity problem on May 15. In 2012, over 40 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese, and the WHO established a Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity to prevent that number from nearly doubling by 2025.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone