According to estimates, the number of people considered obese worldwide is already over one billion, according to a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and an international research group, which also pointed out that obesity is a bigger problem than malnutrition in most countries.
“There are an astonishing number of obese people,” said Majid Ezzati, a professor at Imperial College London and lead author of the research published in the Lancet journal on Thursday.
There are more than a billion obese people on Earth
The researchers used the data of more than 220 million people from more than 190 countries to prepare the report.
Ezzati said: while the proportion of obese people is stagnating in many richer countries, it is increasing rapidly elsewhere. He added that although malnutrition is on the decline worldwide, it is still a serious problem in many countries, where health problems caused not only by hunger, but also by obesity must be dealt with, which represents a double burden.
Francesco Branca, head of nutrition at the WHO, recalled that although obesity was once associated with wealth, today it is a worldwide problem.
The report stated: between 1990 and 2022, the proportion of obese people in the adult population more than doubled, and in the 5-19 age group it quadrupled.
In the same period, according to the analysis, the proportion of girls considered malnourished decreased by a fifth, that of malnourished boys by a third, and that of adults by half.
Ezzati called the increase in the proportion of obese children extremely worrying, at the same time he pointed out that hunger still affects hundreds of millions worldwide.
Severe malnutrition is harmful to children’s development and can even lead to death. And obesity threatens the development of many serious diseases, including diabetes, heart and kidney disease, and can also cause early death.
The double burden has increased primarily in poor and middle-income countries, such as the Caribbean and the Middle East. At the same time, in some European countries, including Spain, researchers noticed a decrease or stagnation in the proportion of obese people.
1,500 scientists from the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration (Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration) participated in the preparation of the report. The researchers last published their findings in 2017. According to the data at the time, about 774 million of the population over the age of 5 were obese, globally one in eight people, similar to the estimates filtered from the current data.
According to Tedrosz Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, measures such as taxing products with high sugar content and promoting healthy school meals can help in the fight against obesity.
