Almost 60% of all adults and a third of all children in the world will be overweight or obesity by 2050 unless governments take action, said a great new study on Tuesday.
The research published in Lancet Medical Journal used data from 204 countries to paint a gloomy image of what it described as one of the great health challenges of the century.
“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a deep tragedy and monumental social failure,” said main author Emmanuela Gakidou, of the Institute of Metric and Health Evaluation based in the United States (IHME).
The number of overweight or obese people throughout the world increased from 929 million in 1990 to 2,600 million in 2021, according to the study.
Without a serious change, researchers estimate that 3.8 billion adults will be overweight or obesity in 15 years, or about 60% of the world adult population in 2050.
The world’s health systems will be under paralyzing pressure, the researchers warned, with about a quarter of the obese of the world that is expected to be over 65 years old at that time.
They also predicted a 121% increase in obesity between children and adolescents around the world.
A third of all obese young people will live in two regions: North Africa and the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean, by 2050, the researchers warned.
But it is not too late to act, said the study co -author Jessica Kerr, from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia.
“A much stronger political commitment is needed to transform diets into sustainable global food systems,” he said.
That commitment was also necessary for strategies “that improve the nutrition of people, physical activity and living environments, whether too much processed foods or not enough parks,” Kerr said.
More than half of adults overweight or obesity of the world already live in just eight countries: China, India, the United States, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt, said the study.
While sedentary lifestyles and sedentary lifestyles are clearly driving of the obesity epidemic, “there is doubts” about the underlying causes of this, said Thorkild Sorensen, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen who is not involved in the study.
For example, socially private groups have a “consistent and inexplicable trend” towards obesity, he said in a comment linked in the lancet.
The research is based on figures from the global loading study of the IHME disease, which brings together thousands of researchers worldwide and is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
