More than a billion people affected, an explosion of cases worldwide: obesity is dangerously gaining ground

This pathology affects more and more people across the planet. NIMES – STEPHANE BARBIER

The latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), published in the medical journal The Lancet, three days before the world day dedicated to this pathology, are worrying. The obesity rate has quadrupled in thirty years among children and adolescents.

A billion people. One in eight. Obesity has become a real phenomenon that is spreading across the planet, show the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), published Friday by the medical journal The Lancet, three days before World Day. dedicated to this pathology.

This threshold had not been anticipated by the WHO before 2030, but the obesity rate has doubled in thirty years. Worse: it quadrupled among those under 18.

Boys as children, women as adults

Boys are the most affected among children (59%) and women as adults (54%), notes the WHO, based on more than 3,600 studies covering 197 countries.

And, according to the authors of the study, cited by Le Monde, the evolution of food alone would explain part of this acceleration, with a shift < em>"from subsistence and local food to transported commercial foods", richer in calories, as is the processed food that develops in detriment of fresh produce. Low-income countries are particularly affected by this form of malnutrition.

Food evolves

According to The Lancet, France is making progress in this area, with a 2-point drop in obesity among French women (compared to a 4.6-point drop in Spain) and stabilization in men.

Nutrition is changing The proportion of adults suffering from undernutrition or excessive thinness has decreased by more than half in the same period across the world.

So much so that there are now more overweight people than underweight people in most countries. The WHO defines obesity in adults as a body mass index (BMI, weight divided by height squared) greater than 30 (below 18.5, the person is on the contrary underweight).