Global Obesity Crisis: 879 Million Adults and 159 Million Children Affected in 2022

2024-03-01 15:19:24
879 million adults and 159 million children and adolescents were obese in 2022, four times more than in 1990, according to an international study published by “The Lancet” this Friday, March 1.

Global malnutrition continues to grow, and increasingly affects poor countries. A large study published this Friday, March 1 in the British medical journal The Lancet and carried out in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that in 32 years, the rate of obesity has more than doubled among adults. , and quadrupled among children worldwide. Obesity now affects more than a billion people worldwide, or one in eight people on the planet.

Complex and multifactorial, this chronic disease is accompanied by an increase in mortality due to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, certain cancers or respiratory diseases, such as Covid-19. The Lancet study observes an acceleration of the phenomenon in low- or middle-income countries, while it tends to plateau in Western Europe, and particularly in France (+0.5% among men), even if the data French women are lacking and obesity among young adults remains a major issue.

“We expected to reach the figure of one billion in 2030, but it arrived much more quickly than anticipated,” the director of the WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety said on Thursday, February 29. Francesco Branca, during a press conference organized to present the study, which is based on data from around 220 million people in more than 190 countries.

In detail, 57% of adults affected worldwide are women (504 million), but the trend has increased especially among men, tripling in thirty years, from 4.8% in 1990 to 14% in 2022. Even more worrying, obesity will affect nearly 160 million children and adolescents in 2022 (94 million boys and 65 million girls). In 1990, there were 31 million.

“A global problem”

Another lesson from the study: certain low- or middle-income countries, notably in Polynesia and Micronesia, the Caribbean, the Middle East (+22% in Saudi Arabia) and North Africa, now display higher obesity rates to those of many industrialized countries, particularly in Europe. “In the past, we tended to consider obesity as a problem of rich countries, now it is a global problem,” remarks Francesco Branca. He sees in particular the effect of a “rapid transformation, and not for the better, of food systems in low- or middle-income countries”.

Conversely, obesity shows “signs of decline in certain southern European countries, especially for women, Spain and France being notable examples”, according to Professor Majid Ezzati, the one of the main authors of the study.

Now, “in most countries, a greater number of people are affected by obesity than by underweight” (also called underweight), which has decreased since 1990, point out the researchers. However, underweight remains a major problem in certain regions of the world, such as South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. It is linked to increased mortality in women and very young children before and following childbirth, or a higher risk of death from infectious diseases.

Obesity and underweight are the two sides of malnutrition. This “double burden” of undernutrition and obesity affects many low- and middle-income countries, where on the one hand part of the population still does not have access to sufficient caloric intake, while others the other, the development of processed and poor quality food, to the detriment of fresh products, can cause rapid transitions from underweight to obesity.

The private sector called for more responsibility

“This new study highlights the importance of preventing and managing obesity from early in life and into adulthood, through diet, physical activity and healthy adequate care to meet needs,” underlines Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, in a press release. He also calls for “cooperation from the private sector, which must be responsible for the impact of its products on health”.

For the WHO, the beneficial actions implemented in certain countries such as Latin America are insufficiently applied on a global scale. He recommends taxing sugary drinks, subsidizing healthy foods, limiting the marketing of unhealthy foods to children, displaying nutritional data on packaging, and encouraging physical activity. In 2021, a dental device developed in New Zealand to reduce eating caused controversy.

Furthermore, The Lancet study highlights the development of treatments for diabetes that also act once morest obesity, arousing the appetite of pharmaceutical groups and nourishing the hopes of millions of patients. The authors, however, wish to remain cautious: “these drugs are an important tool, but not a solution” to obesity and prevention, judged Francesco Branca. “It is important to look at the long-term or side effects of these medications,” he warned.

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