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Worldwide Obesity Tops 1 Billion (axios.com) 144

Rates of obesity in the U.S. and around the world have more than doubled over the past three decades, according to a new study in The Lancet. From a report: More than 1 billion people worldwide now have obesity, a sign of worsening nutrition that's also raising the risk of leading causes of death and disease such as high blood pressure, cancer and diabetes. The global rate of obesity more than doubled among women, from 8.8% to 18.5%, and nearly tripled in men, from 4.8% to 14.0%, between 1990 and 2022, according to research that pulls from over 3,600 studies.

The obesity rate among children and adolescents increased by roughly four times, from 1.7% to 6.9% in girls and 2.1% to 9.3% in boys. Just over 4 in 10 adults and 2 in 5 kids in the U.S. are obese. The U.S. now has the world's 10th-highest male obesity rate and 36th-highest female obesity rate. In 1990, the U.S. had the world's 17th-highest male obesity rate and the 41st-highest female obesity rate.

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Worldwide Obesity Tops 1 Billion

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  • This article is genocide
  • by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Friday March 01, 2024 @04:50PM (#64283028)

    "More than 1 billion people worldwide now have obesity, a sign of worsening nutrition..."

    To be fair, how are our starvation numbers looking? If we've traded an equal or greater number of skeletors for plumplings, I call it a net win.

    • It's a big win.

    • To be fair, how are our starvation numbers looking? If we've traded an equal or greater number of skeletors for plumplings, I call it a net win.

      ^This. While neither Cartman nor Starvin Marvin should be aspirational I still know which I would choose first.

    • Net win for whom? Starving people generally do not burden a medical system with high lifetime costs. And just maximising the number of humans alive at all costs hasn't worked well for our planet overall.

      • It's the American way(TM); quantity over quality.

        Even at the Oscars it becomes very clear about what they actually mean; just substitute the word "best" for "most", e.g. award for the most acting, award for the most special effects, etc.. Everything's a festival of excess.

        It must be gutting for Americans(TM) to hear that they're only ranked 10th in the world. Maybe West Virginia (40.6% obese) can secede & take the number one position?
      • Are you sure about that? Actual starvation (then next step after malnutrition) is really bad for your health, especially for child development, a nation starting off with widespread permanent disability is not going to do well. You'd be better off saving on a medical system, by not having medicine, as was tradition.

        • This. Especially for kids. If a kid starves for more than an extremely brief period, they can quickly wind up with lifelong developmental problems that make obesity seem like a walk in the park. Ive seen it. Obesity is a problem but starvation is a hundred times worse to deal with. Better to first make sure everybody has plenty of nutrition and then tackle the obesity.
    • Obesity isn't the result of worsening nutrition. It's the result of a combination of too little muscle and in the insulin receptors in the muscles being down-regulated. I used to get a lot of pushback when I said this. But now that we have weight loss drugs that reverse the insulin receptor down-regulation (but not the insufficient muscle mass), the evidence is now overwhelming.
    • Locally there's been billboards that say "1 in 5 children in [this state] face hunger". I always laughed at those because 3 in 5 children in this state face obesity! That means 1 in 5 children face normal weight. First World problems. :(

    • Up until around 2010 there was a multi decade global downward trend in undernourished people but that trend stalled and the numbers are creeping up again.

      Of course this trend isnâ(TM)t in any simple way linked to the obesity trend. Itâ(TM)s possible for the numbers of obese people and the number of starving people to both go up; we are largely talking about different populations of people.

      In wealthy countries where starvation is relatively rare, obesity is not a reliable marker of good nutrition

      • The 400 pounders generally get enough of every possible vitamin and such.

        Whats most perplexing and annoying is the people, mostly americans, who insist that they're obese because they're poor as if fast food was an affordable way to eat. Sure its cheaper than gourmet restaurants but thats high class expensive.

        (Mcd around here in upper 3rd world is a luxury flex, not that street noodles didn't have more calories msg and oil, they just can't afford to buy mukbang buckets of it)

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          Whats most perplexing and annoying is the people, mostly americans, who insist that they're obese because they're poor as if fast food was an affordable way to eat. Sure its cheaper than gourmet restaurants but thats high class expensive.

          I'm not necessarily talking about fast food restaurants, although the role they play in feeding the poor is probably more complicated than you realize. About 20% of Americans live in a food desert -- places without sources of affordable fresh food. Their source of groceries may be the dollar store, which have those kinds of cheap, ultraprocessed foods made with government subsidized feedstocks that live in the interior of your supermarket and which your nutritionist tells you to avoid.

          Although my family w

    • Skeletor is a massive roid monster with a skull for a head. Skinny he ain't.

      https://static.wikia.nocookie.... [nocookie.net]

  • by TheSlashdotHunter ( 10317841 ) on Friday March 01, 2024 @05:05PM (#64283084)
    We should ban sodas in schools. But politicians get so much money from the big sugar industry, good ideas get lost. Don't get me know wrong, climate change is important and we should do work to prevent it the best we can but THIS issue is way greater than any issue in our lifetime. It's terrible to see fat kids, or see elderly with cutoff limbs due to diabetes. Our diets have to be better regulated We have too much sugar and salt in every single piece of food we eat. This is preventable. Europe does some minor regulation, but it's FAR more than we even try to do in the U.S. It's very sad that this issue gets glossed over by illegal immigration (which is a problem), and even climate change (which is going to happen). There are clearly ways we can fight this, unlike other issues. This too adds more to healthcare costs, which is a huge problem in the U.S. I'm sad to see what Americans rank as the number one issue, and this isn't there.
    • This is a personal responsibility issue. You can't blame the corporations or the government for your people's eating habits and lack of exercise. Education on healthy eating is easy to find on the Internet. At least in the USA, almost everyone over the age of 10 has an Internet enabled smart phone that they could look this up with. Some schools even teach healthy eating in some of their courses.

      That some cultures eat foods that are bad for them is not something the government could or even should try to tac

      • by TheSlashdotHunter ( 10317841 ) on Friday March 01, 2024 @05:26PM (#64283180)
        When the vast majority of low cost food is loaded with sugar and salt, that IS the government's responsibilty.

        When healthcare costs go up and health crisis emerges, as we saw even with covid, that IS the government's responsibilty.

        When kids are indoctrinated into sugar and saltly foods, that IS the government's reponsibility. We don't let kids smoke or get tattoos to proetct them, but this is WAY worse than either of them. Its a slow death peopel like you carelessly brush off (it's your own problem blah blah balh, but kids learn these behaviors from uncaring people like you).

        When inflation casues "good" food to cost significantly more then cheap salt and sugar laced food, that IS the governments responsibilty.

        What is your definition of what the government is responsible for, if not for keeping society safe, even if it's from corporations that pass bad products cheaply and have no problem getting kids hooked on this kind of garbage food. Are you for free drugs for kids too? Might as well get them addicted at a young age? You really don't care about anything, do you.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • This is the dumbest of all dumb dietary takes. There is a miniscule difference between table sugar and HFCS, like 3%. It's not bad because it's made of fructose, it's bad because they use it plus citric acid to replace veg oil in processed foods to improve shelf stability.

          • You didn't take chemistry or biology did you.

            Table sugar, sucrose, is a disaccharide that is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. High fructose corn syrup is a whopping 55% fructose and the rest glucose. Do you really think 5% more fructose is really going to make a difference?

            The problem is sugar, period. Lose the sugar water of any type, then start on the processed food.

            On the same topic, modified food starch is a glucose polymer that falls apart quickly and hits you with a glucose surge. That's also bad.

            One las

        • You don't have to shop the middle of the store to eat. Toss in some pasta, rice and beans. I just made a batch of chili for less then $10. Make some rice on the side and I could feed 4 people for two dinner or a single person could be eating that for 4 days.

          No one needs to eat fast food. It's cheaper not to in fact. Frozen veggies are cheap and just as good for you as fresh (better because they are going to go bad in a few days). Buying and stocking up when stuff is on a good price point definitely makes th

          • by tepples ( 727027 )

            Instead of driving to the store, walk! Better for you.

            And breathe exhaust from the cars on the highway you walk along for 4 km (2 and a half miles) each way to and from the store. And risk getting hit by a car on the way there or back because sidewalks are inadequate. And risk your frozen veggies and chicken thawing.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

        This is a personal responsibility issue. You can't blame the corporations or the government for your people's eating habits and lack of exercise.

        Except you absolutely can. When you live in a society where governments have allowed corporations to ensure that the most readily available and visible foods are the unhealthy ones, and you get raised on a diet of government provided shit determined by corporate lobbyists, the concept of personal responsibility ceases to be relevant.

        Your responsibility should be to make unbiased choices. The reality is in order to eat healthy your responsibility is to actively fight the society governments and corporations

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by sarren1901 ( 5415506 )

          I work in a grocery store. It's so painfully easy to walk around the perimeter to get almost all your required foods it's not even funny. At most, you need to go down maybe two middle aisles for pasta, rice, beans and spices.

          No one forces you to buy soda. You aren't being held at gun point to buy frozen pre-made meals. You don't need to sit around eating chips, cracks and candy all day. Just don't buy it. It's that easy.

          If I want to eat poorly, that should really be up to me. By the exact same token, eating

          • You aren't being held at gun point to buy frozen pre-made meals.

            In other news, rich man wonders why poor people don't just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

            There are an awful lot of people with little time between working two jobs to make ends meet, and on the other end you have large companies with literal research departments figuring out how to make this shit as addictive as possible.

            I seriously don't understand you folks that want government to do everything for you and protect you from every pos

          • No one forces you to buy soda.

            You missed my point. No one forces you to buy soda, but you do so because it is your learned instinct. It is something you learned from school where you got it in your canteen, it's something you learned from never being outside of view of a vending machine, it's something you learned from ... YOUR GROCERY STORE. Wait what? Yeah you said it yourself, you need to walk around the perimeter? In my local store the soda and frozen section is well and truly out of the way. You can't even stumble up in walking thr

    • No, it's their right to get addicted to carefully designed, chemically engineered junk food when they're under the age of consent & continue to make poor eating choices into adulthood. Freedom!
    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      I should had listened to my queen and stop drinking sodas and others when I was younger. :(

  • Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)

    While the article mentions worsening nutrition, it conveniently leaves out people sitting on their fat asses as they play on their phones. Don't need to go to a store because their lazy ass can order from their phone. Don't need to go to a movie theater because they can sit on their couch. Don't need to go out to a restaurant because their lazy ass can order from their phone (and pay two to three times the cost to have it delivered).

    All of the above normally required people get up and move about. Both go

    • While its true that physical activity is important, its not nearly as important as consuming better food to begin with. Burning 2000 calories through exercise takes a VERY long time. That would several hours of physical activity. A typical Mcdonalds Double Quarter pounder with fries is about 1500 calories in just one meal. When you consume that crap you are already behind the game unless you're going to be up on a roof or landscaping the rest of the day.

      Convenient healthy options like Salad and Go are maki

      • I strongly disagree with your comment. Trying to burn 2000 calories through exercise is insane. That would take you 2-3 hours a day and I don't see how that would improve health. If you have a healthy amount of muscle and by healthy amount I mean the minimum to keep your bones from melting away, you'll probably need much more than 2k calories/day. The best measure of a health amount of muscle is can you deadlift twice your bodyweight. I'm guessing that 99% of people can't do that. And that's why they
    • Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)

      by BetterSense ( 1398915 ) on Friday March 01, 2024 @06:52PM (#64283468)
      This is almost exactly backward. Exercise is only tangentially related to obesity. Obesity is caused by eating patterns. Furthermore, sloth is exacerbated by being obese.

      Exercise can move the weight-loss needle slightly...very slightly, unless you are exercising at huge levels. But even if you are exercising at huge levels, it is very easy to just make that up by eating. Exercise is neither necessary NOR sufficient to cause weight loss. Changing eating patterns is BOTH necessary AND sufficient to cause weight loss...with or without exercise. So you have to learn to eat less, no matter what. Meanwhile, exercise makes you hungrier, so it's either a net wash, or plausibly even a negative for weight loss.

      Most people who try eating less just make a joke of an effort. Like they switch to diet Ranch dressing or something. I'm talking about, try eating a small meal once a day. Try eating every other day. If you must eat 3 times per day, try eating like, 200-500 calorie meals. Whatever it takes to cause weight loss. When you find out how much food that is, that's just how much you can eat without gaining wait. Prepare to be disappointed, but all it means is that you were over-eating before. Data shows modern people eat more than ever. If you simply eat like your grandfather you'd probably be a healthier weight.

      Every year during Lent I fast from Sunday to Sunday. During this time, I sit on my ass and contemplate life. I usually lose 12-15 pounds. The rest of the year, I commute by bike, hike, kayak, and do other active things, and I eat food and drink beer and slowly put on weight despite the exercise.

      There is an entire industry built around gyms, exercise clothes and equipment, coaching, "health food", "diet food", diet cookbooks, etc. etc. but the one thing that 1) works, guaranteed and 2) is about the only thing that does consistently work is the same thing that doesn't benefit absolutely anybody (except you): Eat less. A lot less. And repeat until desired results are achieved. You will never see an advertisement for this. Even the medical establishment doesn't promote eating less...they are making a killing with diet drugs (which do seem to work but stop working as soon as you stop taking them unless you...learn to eat less).
      • Eating less is not necessarily a good long-term choice. It tends to result in a loss of bone density. Get stronger. That doesn't mean an hour long fitness class where you curl a pink dumbbell. Heavy squats and deadlifts. Find me somebody who squats four plates who complains they can't lose weight.
      • Exercise is important, but you don't need to go to a gym. Simple exercise like a half hour walk or just simply taking the stairs are great, but it should be daily.

        And one should eat regularly, but food with modest amounts of calories. Beer has plenty, much more than people think. There are apps to calculate the amount of calories in a certain amount of a certain food. Avoid sweet food and consume foods with plenty of fiber and water with relatively small amount of calories in relation to weight and volum
      • by 0xG ( 712423 )

        Well, not quite.
        I would say that exercise is essential, not least from a psychological point of view.
        It means taking charge of your body, and not being a victim of it.
        It a commitment to yourself.
        It leads to the discovery that your body can feel pretty damn good.
        And it helps your body in many many other ways.

        For the food part, it's more a question of what you eat, not how much.
        The knowledge is all out there, and we've all heard it, so it needs no repeating.

        The real thing is that junk foods are so heavily ma

  • Call it a hunch.

  • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday March 01, 2024 @06:15PM (#64283348)
    I would not be surprised if we're at peak global obesity, now or in the near future. The latest round of diet drugs seem to be "it," in much the same way that birth control "cured" reproduction, I think obesity is on the way out.

    Or, yes, the drugs could go down like the Hindenburg in a blaze of lawsuits for long-term side effects, like all the previous diet drugs. But so far it doesn't appear so. I think this is it.

  • So not only are there more of us Humans but we're getting bigger as well?
  • Whenever a fat story pops up, there's always someone who says it's because of lack of exercise, someone else who blames high fructose corn syrup, or bad nutrition in general.

    The green revolution happened more than 3 decades ago. How much worse has the worlds nutrition has gotten in the past 30 years? How much less are we exercising?

    A world wide increase in the last 30 years seems more likely to be something environmental. We stopped using leaded gas, maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe it's

  • The obesity rate among children and adolescents increased by roughly four times, from 1.7% to 6.9% in girls and 2.1% to 9.3% in boys. Just over 4 in 10 adults and 2 in 5 kids in the U.S. are obese.

    Is saying "40%" too hard? Or do most Americans really unable to tell immediately that "4 in 10" and "2 in 5" are actually the same?

    Then why keep the 1.7% etc in the previous sentence?

  • Those blue zones with the centenarians, and the so-called Mediterranean diet with lots of olive oil...

    You cook with olive oil. It's not a snack. Olive oil is a proxy for home-cooking.

    I think they live long healthy lives because they make everything at home. And conversely when populations stop doing that, there are some pretty serious consequences.
  • I visited WalMart. I discovered where the one billion people are.

  • In possibly related news, Earth's day is one billion nanoseconds longer than it was three decades ago. "The Earth's moment of inertia seems to have increased for some mysterious reason" explained some scientist.

  • If you are an obese male I am happy to inform you that; the odds are that I will outlive you, I will have a better quality of life doing so and I will have sex with more good looking women than you. Clothing options are just icing on that cake. In most cases being fat is just poor discipline. Yes some people have conditions and blah blah blah but MOST obese people are just unable to stop eating vast amounts of crap or put the bloody fork down. No pity. No excuses. Wanna stop being a mountain of lard? St
  • What is the difference?

  • Not so bad, eh? Good job, Hamas!

  • Honestly, is gluttony on the rise across the entire world? Yeah, no.

    Our food is manipulated into making us fat when we eat reasonable portions.

    I was diabetic and had to inject insulin. I was 80 pounds over weight.

    I am no longer diabetic or overweight and I eat as much or more now than I used to.

    Nowadays, I make jokes: As I am opening a bag of chips that weighs 16 ounces, I laugh and say here goes another two pounds of fat. (I don't eat chips anymore)

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