PHA-Exchange> WHO says 1 billion overweight

[Claudio]

From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern at coombs.anu.edu.au>
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/387995

WHO says 1 billion overweight

PARIS — For every four adults in the world who are malnourished five more 
are overweight, 30% of
them clinically obese, according to the World Health Organization.

The scourge of obesity, bringing in its train a host of health and economic 
problems that could one
day cripple economies, is more prevalent in some countries than others, but 
still constitutes a
global epidemic, says WHO.

A billion people out of the world's six billion population are now 
considered overweight, compared
with 800 million who do not have enough to eat.

While accounting for less than five percent of the population in China, 
Japan and some African
nations, the proportion of obesity — at the other extreme — exceeds 75% in 
some urban zones of
Samoa, and 45% among certain demographic groups in the United States, 
notably among African Americans.

And even within China, more than 20% of the people in certain cities are 
classified as seriously
overweight.

In the United States, 30% of adults are clinically obese, some 60 million 
people. In Europe, Britain
tops the list with 23%, nearly twice the rate in Germany, where 12% tip the 
scales into obesity,
according to the OECD. Italy — the land of pasta — only counts 8% of its 
population as severely
overweight.

But even in European countries where obesity is less prevalent, the 
percentage has increased
steadily over time. In France, with a population of just over 60 million, 
5.9 million people are
obese today, whereas the figure for 10 years ago was only 3.6.

Overall, there are some 200 million adults in the EU — fully 45% of the 
population — who are
measurably overweight.

Rates of excess weight and obesity have climbed to alarming levels among 
children too, experts say.

There are about 14 million overweight pre-teen youngsters in the European 
Union — at least 3 million
of them obese — with an additional 500,000 crossing the line every year.

In the United States, the proportion of youth between the age of six and 19 
classified as overweight
tripled between 1980 and 2002.

Developing countries are not immune to the problem, experts note. In 
Thailand, for example, the
percentage of five-to-12-year-olds who are obese has climbed from 12.2 to 
15.6 in only two years.