Obesity: It's A Global Problem

A recent study published in The Lancet highlights just how obese the world has become.

The study entitled, '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, claims that over the past thirty years the number of overweight and obese people worldwide has tripled from 857 million to 2.1 billion. Meaning that across the globe, nearly 1 out of every 3 people is currently overweight or obese.

Researchers examined data from 183 countries and found that over the past three decades not one single country has achieved success in reducing obesity rates.

The heaviest country was unsurprisingly the United States, which accounts for approximately 13 per cent of the world’s obese people, followed by China and India, which together represent 15 per cent.

The study also found that more than 50 per cent of the world's 600 plus million obese people live in only ten countries: the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan and Indonesia.

The results prove that obesity is now a major public health problem across both the developed and the developing world. As health professionals know all too well, obesity puts people at increased risk of diabetes, osteoarthritis, heart disease and cancer, among many other things. And according to the researchers who led the study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, being overweight is estimated to cause 3.4 million deaths worldwide each year.

Other Key Findings from the Report

-Across the globe prevalence of obesity and being overweight rose by 28 per cent for adults, and 47 percent for children from 1980 and 2013.

-Over the past three decades the largest increase in obesity rates for women were in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Honduras and Bahrain.

-Over the past three decades the largest increase in obesity rates for men were in New Zealand, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

-In Kuwait, Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, Libya, Qatar and Samoa more than 50 per cent of the women are obese.

-In Tonga, more than half the population are obese.

-Rates of overweight and obese children worldwide rose by nearly 50 per cent between 1980 and 2013.

-In the developed world the highest increases in adult obesity were in the US (where approximately a third of the adult population are obese), Australia (29 per cent), and the UK (25 per cent).