The number of obese children and adolescents aged five to 19 years worldwide has risen ten fold in the past four decades, a UN-backed study has revealed. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in the study that if current trends continued, there would be more obese children and adolescents than those moderately or severely underweight by 2022. The study led by Imperial College London and WHO was published in The Lancet, to commemorate the World Obesity Day Ms Fiona Bull, Programme Coordinator for Surveillance and Population-based Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO, said obesity was a global health crisis. Bull said: “These data highlight, remind and reinforce that overweight and obesity is a global health crisis today, and threatens to worsen in coming years unless we start taking drastic action. “It looked at body mass index (BMI) from weight and height measurements of nearly 130 million people, including 31.5 million youth aged five to 19. “Obesity rates in the world’s children and adolescents increased from less than one per cent – equivalent to five million girls and six million boys – in 1975 to nearly six per cent, or 50 million girls, and nearly eight per cent, or 74 million boys, in 2016.” Combined, the number of obese five to 19 year olds rose more than tenfold globally, from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016 while an additional 213 million were overweight in 2016 but fell below the threshold for obesity. “These worrying trends reflect the impact of food marketing and policies across the globe, with healthy nutritious foods too expensive for poor families and communities,” said lead author Majid Ezzati, a professor at Imperial’s School of Public Health. Ezzati said that the trend predicts a generation of children and adolescents growing up obese and at greater risk of diseases, like diabetes. He stressed the need to make healthy, nutritious food more available at home and school, especially in poor families and communities, as well as the need for regulations and taxes to protect children from unhealthy foods. “If post-2000 trends continue, global levels of child and adolescent obesity will surpass those for moderately and severely underweight youth from the same age group by 2022. “In 2016, the global number of moderately or severely underweight girls and boys was 75 million and 117 million respectively,” the study found. In conjunction with the study, WHO is publishing a summary of the plan that gives countries clear guidance on effective actions to curb childhood and adolescent obesity. WHO has also released guidelines calling on frontline healthcare workers to actively identify and manage children who are overweight or obese. Bull said “countries should aim particularly to reduce consumption of cheap, ultra-processed, calorie dense, nutrient poor foods. “They should also reduce the time children spend on screen-based and sedentary leisure activities by promoting greater participation in physical activity through active recreation and sports,” he said.
source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/10/youth-obesity-increases-10-fold-four-decades-un-report/