The world isn’t getting smaller, it’s getting fatter, according to a comprehensive report published Thursday in The Lancet.
Whether you’re looking at men or women, children or adults, citizens of rich countries or poor ones, people were much more likely to be overweight or obese in 2013 than they were in 1980, the study found.
In 1980, there were 857 million people on the planet who were either overweight or obese. Thirty-three years later, the comparable figure was 2.1 billion.
It’s not just that the global population grew (and thus the number of people with too many pounds on their frames). The proportion of men who were overweight or obese rose from 28.8 percent in 1980 to 36.9 percent in 2013, while the proportion of women in that category increased from 29.8 percent to 38 percent during the same period, the report said.
In developed countries, 16.9 percent of boys and 16.2 percent of girls were overweight or obese in 1980. By 2013, those figures were 23.8 percent and 22.6 percent, respectively. Even in developing countries, the prevalence of overweight and obesity among boys rose from 8.1 percent to 12.9 percent and the prevalence among girls grew from 8.4 percent to 13.4 percent, the researchers found.
All over the world, the passage of time was marked by bigger waistlines. “Successive cohorts seemed to be gaining weight at all ages, including childhood and adolescence,” the researchers found. The most rapid period of weight gain came between the ages of 20 and 40.
A few extra pounds may seem harmless, but their cumulative effect is serious, health experts say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that being overweight or obese will increase a person’s risk of such life-threatening conditions as coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke and certain types of cancer, among other problems. A 2010 study in The Lancet estimated that overweight and obesity caused 3.4 million deaths worldwide.
