Looming epidemic of ‘severe obesity’ by 2025
Print Edition
ONE in five adults could be obese by 2025, said a major survey yesterday that warned of a looming epidemic of “severe obesity” with significant health and economic costs.
The ratio of obese adults has more than doubled in the 40 years since 1975, and will climb further in the coming nine, the research showed.
Of about 5 billion adults alive in 2014, 641 million were obese, it found. The figure was set to exceed 1.1 billion by 2025.
“There will be health consequences of magnitudes that we do not know,” author Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London said of the research published by The Lancet medical journal.
“Obesity and especially severe and morbid obesity, affect many organs and physiological processes.
“We can deal with some of these, like higher cholesterol or blood pressure, through medicines. But for many others, including diabetes, we don’t have effective treatment.”
People are divided into healthy or unhealthy weight categories based on a universally adopted measure dubbed body mass index — a ratio of weight-to-height squared. A healthy BMI ranges from 18.5 to 24.9.
One is considered underweight below 18.5, overweight from 25 up, and obese from 30 — when the risk of diabetes, stroke, heart disease and some cancers escalates massively.
With a BMI of 35 one is categorized as severely obese, and from 40 upward as morbidly so.
Among men globally, obesity tripled from 3.2 percent of the population in 1975 to 10.8 percent in 2014 (some 266 million), and among women it rose from 6.4 percent to 14.9 percent (375 million), said the survey — 12.9 percent combined.
This was equivalent to the average adult, 18 and older, being 1.5 kilograms heavier every decade.
“If the rate of obesity continues at this pace, by 2025 roughly a fifth of men (18 percent) and women (21 percent) will be obese,” according to a statement by The Lancet.
More than 6 percent of men and 9 percent of women will be severely obese.
The ratio of underweight people in the world declined at a slower rate than obesity grew, said the authors — from about 13.8 percent in 1975 to 8.8 percent for men, and 14.6 percent to 9.7 percent for women.
“Over the past 40 years, 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,” said Ezzati.
At current rates, more women will be severely obese (a BMI of 35 or more) than underweight by 2025, and the world will miss its stated target of halting obesity at 2010 levels.
The survey, which did not include children, claimed to be the most comprehensive of its kind conducted to date.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
