Study: Number of obese kids, teens has increased ten-fold
In the last 40 years, the number of obese children and adolescents across the globe has skyrocketed ten-fold, according to new research published Tuesday in The Lancet. And that's not the only public health issue researchers focused on. Specifically, 5 million girls were found to be obese in 1975, compared to 50 million in 2016. Boys saw a similar trajectory with obesity numbers climbing from 6 million to 74 million. Researchers from Imperial College London headed the study, which analyzed child and adolescent obesity trends across 200 countries, pooling together 2,416 population-based studies.
"While average BMI among children and adolescents has recently plateaued in Europe and North America, this is not an excuse for complacency as more than one in five young people in the U.S. and one in 10 in the U.K. are obese," James Bentham, University of Kent statistician and study author, told CNN.
Healthy eating initiatives in schools across America
But while the number of obese children in the world has soared, there are even greater numbers of children and adolescents between ages 5 and 19 who are moderately to severely underweight (192 million).
What's clear from this research is that undernutrition and obesity issues haven't been top of mind for the same groups, and that both require attention.
"Our findings highlight the disconnect between the global dialogue on overweight and obesity, which has largely overlooked the remaining under-nutrition burden, and the initiatives and donors focusing on under-nutrition that have paid little attention to the looming burden of overweight and obesity," study author Majid Ezzati, professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London in the U.K., told CNN.
In the U.S. alone, 1 in 6 children and adolescents are obese.
