Obesity has for the first time been declared a bigger health threat than hunger – with one billion people now too fat worldwide.
Roughly 159 million children and adolescents and 879 million adults have a weight that is so high relative to their height that it classifies them as obese, the equivalent of around one in eight people.
Meanwhile, rates of underweight dropped among children and adolescents and more than halved among adults worldwide.
While America is often thought of as the most obese country in the world, its 139million obese population pales in comparison to China’s 200million, or India’s 350million.
And even when it is broken down in terms of proportion of the population, the US ranks 10th highest for men and 36th highest for women out of 190 countries, according to the new study published in The Lancet.
Places with the highest prevalence of obesity are Tonga , American Samoa, Polynesia and Micronesia, Cook Islands and Niue. The availability of unhealthy food versus healthy food is thought to be behind the soaring obesity rates in many island nations
Obesity rates among youngsters 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 Lancet medical journal.
The obesity rate among American adults 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.
Over the same period, the rate almost doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent among US girls and from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent for boys.
In the US, men had had the world’s third-greatest increase in obesity rates during those two decades, just behind Romania and Qatar, the study showed.
The research team said there is an urgent need for serious changes in how we deal with obesity.
Obesity can raise the risk of a multitude of serious health conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
The obesity rate among American adults 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 almost doubled from 11.6 percent to 19.4 percent among US girls and from 11.5 percent to 21.7 percent for boys
Senior author Professor Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London, said: ‘It is very concerning that the epidemic of obesity that was evident among adults in much of the world in 1990 is now mirrored in school-aged children and adolescents.
‘At the same time, hundreds of millions are still affected by undernutrition, particularly in some of the poorest parts of the world.
‘To successfully tackle both forms of malnutrition it is vital we significantly improve the availability and affordability of healthy, nutritious foods.’
Globally, the obesity rate more than doubled in women, nearly tripled in men, and more than quadrupled in girls and boys, from 1990 to 2022.
Places with the highest prevalence of obesity are Tonga, American Samoa, Polynesia and Micronesia, Cook Islands and Niue.
The availability of unhealthy food versus healthy food is thought to be behind the soaring obesity rates in many island nations.
There have been big marketing campaigns encouraging unhealthy foods, and healthier options can be expensive and difficult to find.
Another key cause is a cheap, fatty kind of meat called mutton flaps, which is imported from New Zealand.
During the middle of the 20th century, offcuts of meat starting arriving in the Pacific Islands, such as turkey tails from America and mutton flaps from New Zealand, which were both cheap and popular.
Many Tongans are under the impression that something imported is superior and they are not educated about how to eat healthily, 82-year-old Papiloa Foliaki, a former nurse, activist and politician, who now works in the hotel business, told the BBC.
Data also showed around that globally, as of 2022, around 532 million people are underweight, 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 Timor-Leste for women and Eritrea and Ethiopia for men, where more than 20 percent of the adult population were affected by underweight.
In 2022, obesity rates were higher than rates of underweight for girls and boys in around two thirds of the world’s countries.
The study 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 body mass index (BMI), which is calculated using their weight and height, to understand how obesity and underweight have changed worldwide over three decades.
The team gathered data from more than 3,000 population studies with 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-based surveys.
