Overweight and obesity rates have reached epidemic proportions in Europe and continue to rise, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday.
In Europe, nearly a quarter of adults are now obese, making the prevalence of obesity higher than in any other region except the Americas, the organization’s European branch said in a statement. 53 States.
And no country in the region can currently claim to stop the progression and the scale of the problem was revealed with force during the Covid-19 pandemic where overweight was a risk factor.
“Increased body mass index is a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases, including cancers and cardiovascular diseases,” warned WHO Europe director Hans Kluge, quoted in the report. .
Overweight and obesity are thus the cause of more than 1.2 million deaths per year, representing more than 13% of deaths in the region, according to the study.
Obesity is the cause of at least 13 different types of cancer and likely to be directly responsible for at least 200,000 new cases of cancer per year, according to the WHO.
“This figure is expected to increase further in the coming years,” the organization warned.
The latest comprehensive data available, which dates back to 2016, shows that 59% of adults and nearly one in three children (29% of boys and 27% of girls) are overweight in the Old Continent.
In 1975, barely 40% of European adults were overweight.
The prevalence of obesity in adults has soared 138% since then, with an increase of 21% between 2006 and 2016.
According to the WHO, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it possible to measure the impact of the overweight epidemic in the region.
The restrictions (school closures, confinement) have at the same time “resulted in an increase in exposure to certain risk factors that influence the likelihood that a person will suffer from obesity or overweight”, underlined Mr. Kluge.
The pandemic is causing harmful changes in eating and sports habits, the lasting effects of which must be reversed, argued the WHO.
“Policy interventions that target the environmental and market determinants of poor diets (…) are likely to be most effective in reversing the epidemic,” she said.
The WHO also advocates taxing sugary drinks, subsidizing healthy foods, limiting the marketing of unhealthy foods to children and supporting efforts to encourage lifelong physical activity.
With MAP
