IT HAS become a cliché to call obesity a big problem for a reason: more than 2.1 billion people, or nearly 30% of the global population, are overweight or obese. Excess weight leads to about 5% of worldwide deaths. On current trends, almost half of the world’s adults will be fat by 2030. Over the past three decades, according to a study in the Lancet, a medical journal, no nation has slimmed down.

It’s enough to drive a person to comfort eating. But a new study from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the consultancy’s research arm, offers some hope. It looks at 74 anti-obesity measures around the world, and judges the cost and impact of the 44 for which there were sufficient data. None alone could do much, it concludes, but all 44 together could mean about a fifth of overweight people achieving a reasonable waistline within five to ten years.

Source: Heavy weapons | The Economist

Obesity used to be an issue primarily in well-off countries. It was one of those things flippantly dismissed as a “first-world problem.” Now people are packing on the pounds all over the planet. In some fast-growing cities in China, for example, half the people are now overweight.

A new report from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company finds that more than 2.1 billion people nearly 30 percent of the world’s population are overweight a bit chubby or obese just plain fat.

Over the last decade, no country in the world managed to trim its obesity prevalence. Some of the worst rates of obesity are now in the developing world.

“It seems that many of the emerging markets that are on this phenomenally fast growth trajectory are on an even faster obesity trajectory,” says Richard Dobbs, the head of the McKinsey Global Institute and one of the authors of the obesity report.

Indeed, the number of people categorized as excessively heavy is growing faster than the buffet line at a Vegas casino. The report predicts that if current trends continue, 41 percent of adults in the world will be overweight by the year 2030. The report also finds that burgeoning waistlines have a ripple effect.

“This is a massive global economic issue,” says Dobbs. “It’s largely been left to the health people but actually it’s having a huge economic effect and there really hasn’t been a systematic view of how to address it.”

The McKinsey report estimates the economic impact of obesity around the world at $2 trillion a year. Part of that figure is the cost of caring for diseases that are linked to obesity, like Type 2 diabetes. But there’s an even bigger cost in “the loss of productivity,” Dobbs says. “People suffering from obesity often work less. They have to take more time off sick. They retire early or even die early.”

The United States has the highest obesity rate in the world: 34.9 percent. And while Americans are known for enjoying fast food and being “big,” the other countries in the top five fattest nations might surprise you: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and South Africa.

Dobbs says it’s going to take far more than banning super-size sodas to address what the new report calls a “critical global issue.”

“The challenge we have with addressing obesity is we are fighting thousands of years of evolution,” he says. “Our bodies have a natural inclination to want to horde energy when we have it available. [We want] to horde food and to horde fat.”

Programs to get individuals to eat right and exercise more must be a part of any weight loss effort. But the report makes it clear that focusing just on the eating habits of the morbidly obese — in other words, blaming the victim — won’t solve anything.

This growing global problem is result of social and economic changes that have swept the world over the last century.

Food, for instance, is relatively far cheaper than it used to be.

“In the United States, the share of average household income spent on food fell from 42 percent in 1900 to 30 percent in 1950 and to 13.5 percent in 2003,” the report notes.

Fat Thanks to Sona S. for the tip!

The Whole World Is Fat! And That Ends Up Costing $2 Trillion A Year : Goats and Soda : NPR

Washington (AFP) – Fast-food restaurants in the United States are “disproportionately” targeting black children and kids in middle-income and rural areas, according to a newly published study.

Researchers at Arizona State University and University of Illinois at Chicago looked at 6,716 fast-food outlets nationwide to check the extent of indoor and outdoor marketing aimed at youngsters.

Marketing towards children ranged from free toys to ads featuring sports celebrities and cartoon characters, as well as play areas and promotions for kids’ birthday parties.

“Majority black communities, rural areas and middle-income communities are disproportionately exposed (to child-directed marketing) and specifically to indoor displays of kids’ meal toys, a popular strategy among chain restaurants,” the study said.

“In light of these findings, it is important to urge the fast-food industry to limit children’s exposure to marketing that promotes consumption of unhealthy food choices.”

via Fast food targeting black kids in US – Yahoo News.

A new Arizona State study is generating a lot of talk on the subject of why some women gain weight after starting an exercise regimen.

New York Times physical education columnist Gretchen Reynolds says the group was a cross-section of relatively sedentary but healthy women in their 30s who were overweight.

“They walked 30 minutes three times a week, and at the end of 12 weeks, most of the group of women had gained weight. And they have gained fat, not muscle,” Reynolds says.

The eating habits of the women were relatively normal and didn’t change after the study began, Reynolds says. Scientists noticed women were gaining or losing weight about a month into the study.

The study did find that the women who lost weight in the first four weeks continued to lose weight.

But the study, which was published last month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, did not track the eating habits of the 81 women. Nor did the study track the women’s movements away from the lab.

So, it is not known whether the women who gained fat ate more after exercising or rested more after exercising.

“So the takeaway is, if you want to use exercise to lose weight, get on the bathroom scales after a month, and if you’re not losing weight, look at the rest of your life — make sure you’re not eating more [or] sitting too much and you might actually succeed in losing weight,” she says.

Study examines why women gain weight after exercise – WTOP