Around a quarter of men (24.5%) and women (25.4%) in the UK are obese, according to a major new analysis from the ‘Global Burden of Disease Study 2013’, published in The Lancet.
When you add in those who are overweight, the figures jump to 66.6% for men and 57.2% for women.
For boys aged up to 19, the obesity rate is 7.4%, while for girls in the same age range it is 8.1%.
Commenting on the implications of the study, Professor Klim McPherson from Oxford University says: “An appropriate rebalancing of the primal needs of humans with food availability is essential, which would entail curtailing many aspects of production and marketing for food industries.
“To prevent unsustainable health consequences, BMI needs to return to what it was 30 years ago. Lobstein calculated that to reduce BMI to 1980 levels in the UK would require an 8% reduction in consumption across the country, costing the food industry roughly £8.7 billion a year.
“The solution has to be mainly political, and the question remains, 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?
“Nowhere yet, but voluntary salt reduction might be setting a more achievable trend. Politicians can no longer hide behind ignorance or confusion.”
Worldwide, the study shows there has been a startling weight gain over the past 33 years, with the number of adults who are either obese or overweight rising by 28.0%, while the figure for children has gone up by 47.0%.
In absolute terms, that means the number of overweight and obese people has risen from 857 million in 1980 to 2.1 billion in 2013.
However, the rates vary widely throughout the world, with more than half of the world’s 671 million obese individuals living in just ten countries – the US (more than 13%), China and India (15% combined), Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Over the past three decades, the highest rises in obesity levels among women have been in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Honduras and Bahrain. Among men, they are in New Zealand, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the US.
McPherson added that, although age-standardised rates were lower in developing than in developed countries overall, 62.0% of the world’s obese individuals live in developing countries.
“Our analysis has drawn attention to countries where most adult women and more than a third of adult men are obese.
“No countries have had significant decreases in obesity in the past 33 years. This raises the question as to whether many or most countries are on a trajectory to reach the high rates of obesity seen in countries such as Tonga [83.5% of men over 20 overweight or obese] or Kuwait [84.3% of women over 20 obese or overweight].”