FLICKR, TONY ALTERMore than 30 years of data from 188 nations reveals that the total of obese or overweight people in the world has reached 2.1 billion—nearly 30 percent of the Earth’s population, according to a study published yesterday (May 29) in The Lancet.
“Overweight and obesity have substantially increased everywhere in the world and have undoubtedly become the major health issues of the 21st century,” the University of Graz’s Hermann Toplak, president elect of the European Association for the Study of Obesity, Austria, said at the European Congress on Obesity this week in Sofia, Bulgaria. Toplak pointed the finger at technological advances that promote inactivity and the increasing availability of unhealthy food in developed countries. “The result of these developments are that in today’s society many children, and indeed adults, no longer build up enough muscle mass and functionality, and have lost the culture of ‘classical eating,’ which has instead been replaced by uncontrolled food intake with a snacking and eating culture spread over the whole day.”
The ...
