Obesity has been declared a bigger health threat than hunger for the first time – with one billion people worldwide now considered overweight.
About 159 million children and adolescents and 879 million adults have a weight so high in relation to their height that it classifies them as obese, equivalent to about one in eight people.
Meanwhile, the rate of underweight among children and adolescents fell and halved among adults worldwide.
Although America is often considered the world’s most obese country, its obese population of 139 million pales in comparison to China’s 200 million or India’s 350 million.
And even when broken down by share of population, the US ranks 10th for men and 36th for women out of 190 countries, according to the new study published in The Lancet.
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Places with the highest prevalence of obesity are Tonga, American Samoa, Polynesia and Micronesia, the Cook Islands and Niue. It is believed that the availability of unhealthy food versus healthy food is responsible for the rising obesity rates in many island nations
Obesity rates among young people quadrupled globally between 1990 and 2022 – the latest year available – while rates among adults more than doubled, researchers found.
This means obesity is now the most common form of malnutrition in many countries, according to the study published in the medical journal Lancet.
The obesity rate among American adults has increased from 21.2 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2022 for women and from 16.9 percent to 41.6 percent for men.
During the same period, the rate among American girls nearly doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent and among boys from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent.
In the US, men had the third-largest increase in obesity in the world over those two decades, just behind Romania and Qatar, the study found.
The research team said there is an urgent need for serious changes in the way we deal with obesity.
Obesity can increase the risk of many serious health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
The obesity rate among American adults has increased from 21.2 percent in 1990 to 43.8 percent in 2022 for women and 16.9 percent to 41.6 percent for men
Between 1990 and 2022, the rate nearly doubled among American girls from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent and among boys from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent
Senior author Professor Majid Ezzati from Imperial College London said: ‘It is deeply concerning that the epidemic of obesity that was evident in adults across much of the world in 1990 is now being mirrored in school-age children and adolescents.
‘At the same time, hundreds of millions of people continue to be affected by malnutrition, especially in some of the poorest parts of the world.
‘To successfully tackle both forms of malnutrition, it is crucial that we significantly improve the availability and affordability of healthy, nutritious food.’
Globally, the obesity rate in women has more than doubled between 1990 and 2022, nearly tripled in men, and more than quadrupled in girls and boys.
Places with the highest prevalence of obesity are Tonga, American Samoa, Polynesia and Micronesia, the Cook Islands and Niue.
It is believed that the availability of unhealthy food versus healthy food is responsible for the rising obesity rates in many island nations.
There have been major marketing campaigns encouraging unhealthy foods, and healthier options can be expensive and difficult to find.
Another major cause is a cheap, fatty type of meat called mutton steak, which is imported from New Zealand.
In the mid-20th century, cuts of meat arrived in the Pacific Islands, such as turkey tails from America and mutton steaks from New Zealand, which were both cheap and popular.
Many Tongans are under the impression that something imported is superior and that they have not been taught how to eat healthily, 82-year-old Papiloa Foliaki, a former nurse, activist and politician who now works in the hotel industry, told the BBC .
Data also shows that in 2022, approximately 532 million people will be underweight worldwide, including 183 million women, 164 million men, 77 million girls and 108 million boys.
Countries with the highest prevalence of underweight in 2022 were Eritrea and East Timor for women and Eritrea and Ethiopia for men, where more than 20 percent of the adult population was underweight.
In 2022, the obesity rate among girls and boys was higher than the underweight rate in about two-thirds of the world’s countries.
The research was conducted by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration – a network of health scientists around the world – in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).
The researchers used the body mass index (BMI), which is calculated based on their weight and height, to understand how obesity and underweight have changed globally over the past thirty years.
The team collected data from more than 3,000 population surveys among 222 million people.
The researchers said that although BMI is an imperfect measure for determining the extent of body fat, it is widely recorded in population studies.