- Written by Smitha Mundasad
- health reporter
image source, Getty Images
According to 2022 data, this includes approximately 880 million adults and 159 million children.
The highest rates for women are in Tonga and American Samoa, and for men in American Samoa and Nauru, where about 70 to 80 percent of adults live with obesity.
Out of around 190 countries, the UK ranks 55th for men and 87th for women.
An international team of scientists says major changes are urgently needed in the way obesity is tackled.
Obesity can increase your risk of developing many serious health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.
Researchers ranking global obesity rates (the percentage of the population classified as obese after accounting for age differences) found:
- The United States ranks 10th for men and 36th for women.
- India ranks 19th for women and 21st for men.
- China ranks 11th lowest for women and 52nd lowest for men.
Professor Majid Ezzati, a senior research fellow at Imperial College London, told the BBC: “In many of these island nations, the issue is the availability of healthy and unhealthy food.
“In some cases, the cost and availability of healthier foods may be more of an issue, while there are aggressive marketing campaigns promoting unhealthy foods.”
Professor Ezzati, who has studied global data for many years, found that while underweight people are a growing number of regions of greatest concern, more countries are facing an obesity crisis. He says he is surprised by the speed at which the situation is changing. , decreased.
The report found that obesity rates among children and adolescents quadrupled from 1990 to 2022. However, among adults, the rate more than doubled for women and nearly tripled for men.
At the same time, the proportion of adults classified as underweight has fallen by 50%, but researchers stress that underweight remains a pressing problem, especially in the poorest regions.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said: “This new study highlights the importance of preventing and managing obesity from childhood to adulthood through diet, physical activity and appropriate care. It’s highlighted,” he said.
He added that this will require a commitment from governments and communities, and “crucially requires cooperation from the private sector, which must be held accountable for the health impacts of its products.”
Study co-author Dr Guha Pradeepa of the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation said the major global problem risks exacerbating malnutrition caused by both obesity and underweight.
He said: “The impact of climate change, the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine poses a risk of increasing poverty and the price of nutritious food, exacerbating both obesity and underweight rates. “There is,” he said.
“This ripple effect has led to food shortages in some countries and households, and a shift to less healthy foods in others.”
A network of more than 1,500 researchers, in collaboration with the WHO, analyzed height and weight measurements of approximately 220 million people aged five and older.
They acknowledge that this is an imperfect measure of the degree of body fat, and say that some countries have better data than others, but this is the most widely used and claims that this global analysis is possible.
