Chew on this, America: A new study shows the U.S. tops the list of fattest countries.
The latest analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 found that more than half of the world’s 671 million obese individuals live in 10 countries, with the USA No. 1 on the list, followed by China, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan and Indonesia.
The study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, found the number of overweight and obese people increased from 857 million in 1980 to a belt-popping 2.1 billion in 2013.
The increases were found in both adults, up 28%, and children, up a stunning 47%, in the past 33 years.
“Like most epidemics, obesity is a communicable disease that travels in populations,” said Dr. Linda Fried, the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “In the U.S., poor access to healthy food, limited physical activity and inadequate support of programs like WIC (Women, Infants and Children nutrition program) and Head Start place young people on a path towards lifelong obesity that is difficult — but not impossible — to change.
“Obesity increases risk for other diseases and greater difficulty getting a job,” Fried added. “Legislators need to wake up to their role encouraging anti-obesity initiatives at the local level, understand the critical importance of fruits and vegetables in our diets, and do whatever it takes to get people moving.”
Among the study’s other key findings:
— In the U.S., roughly a third of the adult population is obese.
— In the developed world, men have higher rates of obesity than women, while the opposite is true in developing countries.
— 62% of the world’s obese people live in developing countries.
— In 2013, the proportion of obesity in girls reached 23% in Kuwait, and 30% or more in Samoa and Micronesia. Similar trends were found in boys in the Pacific Islands of Samoa and Kirbati
— In the West, levels of obesity in boys ranged from 14% in Israel and 13% in Malta, to 4% in the Netherlands and Sweden. Levels of obesity in girls were the highest in Luxembourg (13%) and Israel (11%), and lowest in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden (4%).
In one piece of good news for developed countries like the U.S., the rate of increase in adult obesity has started to slow down in the past eight years, apparently because of growing public awareness of obesity and its health risks.
But the study authors said the United Nations’ goal of stopping the worldwide rise in obesity by 2025, while laudable, is unlikely to be achieved without concerted political action and major changes in the food industry.
Commenting on the implications of the study, Oxford Professor Klim McPherson wrote, “The solution has to be mainly political and the questions remain, as with climate change, where is the international will to act decisively in a way that might restrict economic growth in a competitive world, for the public’s health? … Politicians can no longer hide behind ignorance or confusion.”
