More than 640 million of people worldwide are obese and the world has more obese than slim people, according to the analysis of global trends in body mass index (BMI) that was published on Friday.
Continuous growth rates of obesity in the last 40 years means that the number of people with a BMI higher than 30 was increased from 105 million in 1975 to 641 million in 2014, according to the study. More than 1 in 10 men and more than 1 in 7 women are obese, as reported by Reuters.
“The number of people around the world whose weight represents a serious threat to their health is bigger than it was ever before,” said Majid Ezzati, a professor in the School of Public Health at Imperial College in London.
He emphasized the need for coordinated global measures, including reducing the price of healthy food compared to unhealthy or introducing taxes on food with large amounts of sugar or highly processed food.
However, extremely low body weight remains a serious public health problem in the poorest regions of the world, as stated by the authors of the study, and the growth of global trends in obesity could overshadow the problem that many people do not have enough food to eat.
In South Asia, for example, almost a quarter of the population is skinny. In central and eastern Africa, about 12 % of women and 15 % of men are skinny.
The study also found that more obese people live in the United States and China alone, than in any other country.
The lowest BMI in Europe is among the Swiss women and men in BiH. The men in the UK have the 10th BMI in the world and the 3rd in Europe.
(Source: faktor.ba)
