OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY ARE ON TRACK TO AFFECT HALF OF THE WORLD BY 2035

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Fri 03 March 2023:

More than 50% of the world’s population will be overweight or obese by 2035 without significant action, according to a new report.

According to the World Obesity Federation’s 2023 atlas, 51 percent of the world’s population, or more than four billion people, will be obese or overweight within the next 12 years; nearly two million, or one in every four people, will be obese.

Obesity rates are rising rapidly among children and in low-income countries, according to the report.

Describing the data as a “clear warning”, Louise Baur, president of the World Obesity Federation, said policymakers needed to act now to prevent the situation from worsening.

“It is particularly worrying to see obesity rates rising fastest among children and adolescents,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

“Governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation.”

The report found that childhood obesity could more than double from 2020 levels to 208 million boys and 175 million girls by 2035.

The cost to society is significant as a result of the health conditions linked to being overweight, the federation said: more than $4 trillion annually by 2035, or 3 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

However, the authors said they were not blaming individuals, but calling for a focus on the societal, environmental and biological factors involved in the conditions.

The report uses body mass index (BMI) for its assessments, a number calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilogrammes by their height in metres squared. In line with the World Health Organization’s guidelines, a BMI score of more than 25 is overweight and more than 30 is obese.

These groups included 2.6 billion people in 2020, or 38% of the global population.

The study also discovered that low- or middle-income nations in Asia and Africa are almost universally predicted to experience the biggest increases in obesity rates in the upcoming years.

The information will be presented to member states and decision-makers of the UN the following week.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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