Obese or Overweight People Top 2.1 Billion Worldwide

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-28/obese-or-overweight-people-top-2-1-billion-worldwide.html

About 2.1 billion people, or almost one-third of the world’s population, were obese or overweight last year, researchers estimated after examining data from 183 countries.

The estimated number of overweight or obese people almost tripled from 857 million in 1980, according to the analysis published today in The Lancet. The heaviest country was the U.S., accounting for about 13 percent of the world’s obese people, followed by China and India, which together represent 15 percent, according to the study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Obesity can raise the risk of diabetes, osteoarthritis, heart disease and cancer, among other health-threatening conditions, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Being overweight was estimated to have caused 3.4 million deaths worldwide, said Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

BMI Measure

The researchers analyzed data from international surveys on obesity that included height and weight as well as national reports and medical research. They based their analysis on body mass index, a measure of weight and height.

A woman 5 feet, 4 inches tall weighing 175 pounds would have a BMI of 30. A BMI of 30 or more is considered obese, while a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

More than half of the world’s 671 million obese people live in the U.S., China, India, Russia, Brazil,Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan and Indonesia.