Across the globe, people have long been tipping the scales
toward excessive increasing heaviness. Now, new research finds that more of the
world's population is obese than underweight.
"Over the past 40 years, we have changed from a world
in which underweight prevalence was more than double that of obesity to one in
which more people are obese than underweight," Majid Ezzati, senior author
of the paper and professor of public health at Imperial College London, said in a
statement.
In the study, the researchers looked at data from 186 of
the world's 200 countries, representing over 99 percent of the world's
population. The data spanned from 1975 to 2014. The researchers looked at the
percentage of adults who were underweight (which the researchers defined as
having a
body mass index, or BMI, below 18.5), obese (a BMI from 30.0 to 34.9),
severely obese (a BMI from 35.0 to 39.9) or morbidly obese (a BMI greater than
40.0).
Results showed that in the last four decades, the
percentage of men in the world who were underweight decreased from 13.8 percent
to 8.8 percent, and the percentage of underweight women fell from 14.6 percent
to 9.7 percent. [8
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Over the same time span, the prevalence of obesity
increased from 3.2 percent to 10.8 percent in men and from 6.4 percent to 14.9
percent in women, according to the findings published today (March 31) in the
journal The Lancet.
Some countries had no increase in their average BMI since
1975. These included Singapore, Japan, the Czech Republic, Belgium, France and
Switzerland. The largest increases in BMI for men over the study period were
seen in high-income English-speaking countries; for women, the largest
increases were in central Latin America.
Out of all high-income, English-speaking countries, the
United States had the highest average BMI (28). The researchers pointed out
that more than one in four severely obese men in the world and nearly one in
five severely obese women live in the United States. [The
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The researchers also noted that almost one-fifth of all
obese adults (118 million people) and over a quarter of all severely obsess
adults (50 million people) live in six high-income, English-speaking countries:
Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United
States. Polynesia and Micronesia tied for having the highest average BMI in the
world, both with an average BMI of 32.2 for men and 34.8 for women.
While people are well-aware of the world's problems with
ballooning weights, the researchers pointed out that many people in the world
are still underweight. Although the percentage of the world's population that
falls in this category has dropped, the authors stressed that the epidemic of
obesity should not overshadow the needs of people who remain undernourished.
According to the findings, more than one-fifth of the men
in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Ethiopia are
underweight. In Bangladesh and India, a quarter of the women are underweight.
Timor-Leste has the lowest average BMI among women (20.8), and Ethiopia has the
lowest for men (20.1).
In an editorial
published alongside the study, Dr. George Davey Smith, a professor of
epidemiology at the School of Social and Community Medicine in England, also
emphasized the need to pay attention to underweight populations, even in light
of the obesity epidemic. "A focus on obesity at the expense of recognition
of the substantial remaining burden of undernutrition threatens to divert
resources away from disorders that affect the poor to those that are more
likely to affect the wealthier in these countries," Smith wrote in his
editorial.
Although obesity is associated with potentially deadly
health problems, many of those can be helped through medical intervention,
which results in a world that is simultaneously fatter
and healthier, Smith said. He noted that although obesity tends to be a
disease of the poor in more affluent countries, being underweight is still a
problem of the impoverished in many parts of the world.
Using post-2000 trends as a guide, the researchers
estimated that global obesity will reach 18 percent in men and over 21 percent
in women by 2025. The researchers also predicted that severe obesity will pass
6 percent in men and 9 percent in women by that same year.
At the same time, in the world's poorest regions, such as
South Asia, the percentage of people who are underweight will remain a serious
issue, the researchers said