Obesity Highest in US; Bigger Problem than World Hunger
Quote:
Global overeating has become a bigger problem than world hunger with more people now obese than underweight, the biggest ever study of worldwide trends in body mass index has revealed.
And it's only going to get worse, the research, published in British medical journal The Lancet on Friday, says.
Over the past 40 years, the rate of obesity has increased 2.6-fold and the number of obese people worldwide has blown out from 105 million in 1975 to 641 million in 2014, the study found. Nearly 13 per cent of the global population is now obese, compared with just over 9 per cent who are underweight.
Quote:
Almost a fifth of the world's obese adults and more than a quarter of the world's severely obese people live in the six high-income countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the US. Of these, the US has the highest average BMI for both men (28.9) and women (28.7).
Island nations in Polynesia and Micronesia have the highest average BMIs in the world, while East Timor, Ethiopia and Eritrea have the lowest, the study says. In American Samoa the average BMI for women is 34.8 and for men is 32.2. The world's lowest average BMI for women is 20.8 in East Timor; for men, 20.1 in Ethiopia.
this is kind of disingenuous, though. while more people are obese, being severely underweight is more likely to kill you than obesity, so i don't think we can say obesity is a worse problem that easily.
that's not saying obesity isn't unhealthy, but it's not /as/ bad for you
