Lack of concrete action can result in more than half of the world’s population being overweight or obese by 2035, a new study predicts.
According to the World Obesity Federation’s 2023 atlas, more than 4 billion people, or 51% of the world’s population, will be fat or overweight in the coming 12 years.
According to the report, childhood obesity rates are especially increasing quickly and also in low-income countries.
President of the World Obesity Federation Louise Baur described the data as a “clear warning” and urged lawmakers to take immediate action to stop the situation from getting worse.
Giving a statement, she said, “It is particularly worrying to see obesity rates rising fastest among children and adolescents.”
“Governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation,” she added.
According to the study, there could be 208 million boys and 175 million girls who are overweight or obese in infancy by 2035, up from 2020 levels.
According to the federation, the expense to society of the illnesses connected to being overweight will exceed $4 trillion annually by 2035, or 3% of global GDP.
The authors clarified that they were not blaming specific people but rather urging attention to the societal, environmental, and biological variables that contributed to the conditions.
The body mass index (BMI), which is determined by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in square meters, is used by the report to make its evaluations. According to World Health Organization recommendations, a BMI number of over 25 indicates overweight, and over 30 indicates obese.
38% of the global population, or 2.6 billion individuals, fitted into these categories in 2020.
The study also discovered that low- or middle-income nations in Asia and Africa are almost universally predicted to experience the biggest rises in obesity rates in the upcoming years.
The information will be given to member states and decision-makers of the UN the following week.
