Over past three decades. obesity rates increased fourfold among children and doubled among adults
More than 1 billion people worldwide are now living with obesity, with rates among children increasing fourfold across a 32-year period, according to new research.
Analysis of the weight and height measurements of over 220 million people from more than 190 countries shows how body mass index (BMI) changed across the world between 1990 and 2022.
Approximately 1,500 researchers contributed to the study by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). Published in the Lancet, it found that over the period obesity rates increased fourfold among children, and doubled among adults.
Its both. In developed countries kids are playing Fortnite, watching streamers on Twitch etc. and pinging their friends on social media vs. every decade up until the early 2000s, where kids essentially went outside all day anytime they weren’t in school. In the US, dozens of dietary factors are also to blame. Subsidized corn, poor nutrition education, ubiquity of fast food and fast casual restaurants, snack food marketing around social events like holidays and the Super Bowl, advent of food delivery apps, growth of the “body positivity” movement etc. are all reasons people have trended toward obesity.