More People Worldwide Are Obese Than Underweight: Study

With the world getting increasingly more obese, a study abstract by experts from Imperial College London indicates that we have broken some new records. For the first time, there are more people in the world who are obese than underweight.

Studying BMI data from almost 20 million people in 186 different countries, documented between 1975 to 2014, scientists extracted obesity rates from the information. They found that the number of obese people has increased from 105 million in 1975 to 641 million in 2014, whereas the number of underweight people has increased from 330 million to 462 million.

With 10.8 percent of men and 14.9 percent of women classified as obese in 2014, it indicated a rise of 3.2 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively, in 1975. However, those who are documented as underweight have reduced from 14 percent to 9 percent among men and from 15 percent to 10 percent among women in the same period.

Hence, there seem to be 41.7 million obese men and 46.1 million obese women in the US at present.

Even as BMI is not a perfect measure to check out obesity, it is the most commonly used assessment for the medical profession.

"We hope these findings create an imperative to shift responsibility from the individual to governments and to develop and implement policies to address obesity," explained Professor Majid Ezzati, one of the researchers, to the BBC. "For instance, unless we make healthy food options like fresh fruits and vegetables affordable for everyone and increase the price of unhealthy processed foods, the situation is unlikely to change."

The World Health Organization's main target is to see that obesity levels do not get higher in 2025 than in 2010. However, the study seems to indicate that the goal cannot be reached.