http://www.theage.com.au/national/health/obesity-a-bigger-problem-than-world-hunger-lancet-study-says-20160317-gnlbwk.html
Obesity a bigger problem than world hunger, Lancet study says
DateApril 2, 2016 - 3:05AM
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Catherine Armitage, Inga Ting
Global overeating has become a bigger problem than world hunger with
more people now obese than underweight, the biggest ever study of
worldwide trends in body mass index has revealed.
And it's only going to get worse, the research, published in British
medical journal The Lancet on Friday, says.
Over the past 40 years, the rate of obesity has increased 2.6-fold and
the number of obese people worldwide has blown out from 105 million in
1975 to 641 million in 2014, the study found. Nearly 13 per cent of
the global population is now obese, compared with just over 9 per cent
who are underweight.
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"We have changed from a world in which underweight prevalence was more
than double that of obesity, to one in which more people are obese
than underweight," senior study author Majid Ezzati, from the School
of Public Health at Imperial College London, said.
On present trends the world will not meet the target of halting the
rise in the prevalence of obesity at its 2010 level by 2025, Professor
Ezzati said.
Men in East and Southeast Asian had the largest increase in BMI of any
region over the past decade. Since 2005, their average BMI has risen
by more than five per cent - twice the 2.5 per cent increase for men
worldwide.
Globally, men are catching up to women in the obesity stakes, the
research also reveals.
In 1975, women were twice as likely as men to be obese, with 6.4 per
cent of women and 3.2 per cent of men recording a BMI of 30 or higher.
But the figure for men has more than tripled to 10.8 per cent over the
past 40 years, edging closer to the proportion of obese women, which
more than doubled to 14.9 per cent.
In Australia, the average BMI is in the overweight range of 25-29.9
for both women (26.8) and men (27.5). A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is
considered healthy.
On current trends 37 per cent of Australian women and 37.8 per cent of
men will be obese by 2025, the study says.
Almost a fifth of the world's obese adults and more than a quarter of
the world's severely obese people live in the six high-income
countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the US. Of
these, the US has the highest average BMI for both men (28.9) and
women (28.7).
Island nations in Polynesia and Micronesia have the highest average
BMIs in the world, while East Timor, Ethiopia and Eritrea have the
lowest, the study says. In American Samoa the average BMI for women is
34.8 and for men is 32.2. The world's lowest average BMI for women is
20.8 in East Timor; for men, 20.1 in Ethiopia.
Driving the rapid increase in obesity is the changing food
environment, Bruce Neal, director of the food policy division at the
George Institute for Global Health and professor of global medicine at
the University of Sydney, said.
"Incredibly cheap, incredibly unhealthy food has been made available
... everywhere," Professor Neal said.
"If you bathe people in that sort of environment, they will become obese."
By 2025, roughly a fifth of women (21 per cent) and men (18 per cent)
worldwide will be obese on current projections, the study says.
Left unchecked, obesity will "bankrupt our already overwhelmed
healthcare systems", David Crawford, Alfred Deakin Professor and
co-director of the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition at
Deakin University, said.
What is needed is government action "on a scale that has never been
contemplated before", Professor Neal said.
Educating individuals in personal responsibility will not be enough,
he said, because public health campaigns can't compete with the "many,
many millions more dollars" the food industry spends on an "absolutely
contrary" message to maximise its profits.
Subsidising healthy foods and taxing or restricting the sale and
promotion of unhealthy foods were more effective ways of changing food
industry behaviour, Professor Neal said.
Earlier this month, the British government announced it would
introduce a sugar levy on soft drinks from 2018, prompting celebrity
chef Jamie Oliver to urge Australia to "pull your finger out".
Fizzy, sugary drinks are "a very easy, obvious target" because
over-consumption of sugar is the main driver of Australia's "enormous
problem" with obesity, including childhood obesity, Professor Neal
said.
The consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks has increased by 30 per
cent over the past 10 years in Australia, the Victorian Department of
Health's Better Health website says. The standard serving size for
soft drinks has also increased from 375ml cans to the 600ml bottles
commonly sold today. Just one such bottle of soft drink exceeds the
recommended energy intake from refined sugar for an average
14-year-old girl.
Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, director of the Glycemic Index Research
Service at the University of Sydney, said the study's most interesting
finding was that there was virtually no increase in the BMI of women
in Belgium, France and Switzerland - countries associated with with
good chocolate, cheese and wine.
"We need to study them carefully - the women, not the chocolate - and
learn from them", she said.
The BMI is imperfect as a measure of healthy body weight in
individuals and some groups because it does not recognise different
body compositions by differentiating between body fat and muscle mass.
But on average over large populations, it is a "pretty good" measure,
Professor Neal said.
The Lancet study analysed pooled data from 1698 population-based
studies totalling 19.2 million men and women aged 18 and over from 186
countries covering 99 per cent of the world's population.
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Received on Fri Apr 01 2016 - 22:01:48 EDT