For the first time in history, more people are obese than underweight, according to a new study. In 1975, more than twice as many people were underweight than obese...
Behind the global spike is greater access to cheap food as incomes have risen. "It’s been very easy, as countries get out of poverty, to eat a lot, and to eat a lot of unhealthy calories,” said the study’s senior author, adding that "the price of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are often “noticeably more than highly processed carbohydrates." The rich world can blunt the health impacts of unhealthy weight with drugs, but health systems in the developing world may not be equipped to do the same.
The past 40 years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of obese adults worldwide, climbing to about 640 million from 105 million in 1975. If the current trend continues, about one-fifth of adults will be obese by 2025.
The rate has more than doubled for women and tripled for men, according to a new analysis published in the Lancet. Under the present trajectory, the chance of meeting a goal set by the World Health Organization to halt the increase over the next decade is, according to the study, “virtually zero.”
A person who has a body-mass index higher than 30, or weighs at least 203 pounds and is 5-foot-9-inches tall, is considered obese.
The world population’s average weight has increased by about 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilograms) per decade since 1975, the researchers estimate. Excess weight raises the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions.
“The issue really comes down to people either not having enough to eat or not having enough healthy food to eat,” he said. “It becomes a manifestation of the same problem.”
Governments need to prepare for the jump in medical costs that accompany unhealthy weight and focus on prevention now to avoid higher costs in the future, said Bill Dietz, director of the Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at George Washington University. “They should be as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof about the tsunami of diabetes that’s coming their way,” Dietz said. “The cost of this rise in the prevalence of obesity is going to be staggering.”
The main takeaway? Excess weight has become a far bigger global health problem than weighing too little. While low body weight is still a substantial health risk for parts of Africa and South Asia, being too heavy is a much more common hazard around the globe.