A “tsunami of obesity” is unfurling across the world, resulting in a near-doubling of the numbers of dangerously overweight adults since 1980, doctors warned on Friday.
More than half a billion men and women — nearly one in nine of all adults — are clinically obese, according to research by a team from Imperial College London, Harvard and the World Health Organisation.
In 2008 nearly one woman in seven and one man in 10 were obese, it found.
Being too fat causes three million premature deaths each year from heart disease, diabetes, cancers and other disorders, according to the WHO. The researchers described the tableau as “a population emergency.” “(It) will cost tens of millions of preventable deaths unless rapid and widespread actions are taken by governments and health-care systems worldwide,” said the report, published by the Lancet. The problem has been most prevalent in rich nations, rising most in the United States, followed by New Zealand and Australia for women, and Britain and Australia for men.
But many developing countries, especially in the West Asia and in rapidly urbanising areas, are catching up. “These results suggest that overweight affects one-in-three adults and obesity affects one-in-nine adults — a tsunami of obesity that will eventually affect all regions of the world,” Sonia Anand and Salim Yusuf of Canada’s McMaster University wrote in a commentary.