Only 38% were overweight or obese in 2020. That’s an incredible jump. Of course, this is based on BMI, which I recently read is wrong about 30% of the time. Anyway, here’s a gift link:
Starship Axiom, here we come! Can’t wait to have every need catered to by a robot.
I’m curious what they expect countries, especially poor countries, to do about the problem. This article seems hyperbolic, but even if it’s close to being true there needs to be a plan to address the problem besides getting people to eat less and exercise more, which doesn’t usually last long term.
If the root of the obesity problem is insulin resistance, which at least some people believe, you would have to drastically change your diet or start fasting to “fix” the problem, and most people likely won’t do that. I’ve been intermittent fasting for the past three months and lost of 30 lbs.so far. My BMI is now 23.9, so I know it’s possible to lose a lot of weight over a relatively short period of time.
If half the population is overweight then doesn’t that reset the bell curve and redefine what normal weight is?
I don’t think so. There’s a certain weight range that is healthy for the human body to have.
Say that weight range is 90-170 pounds. Then if every single person in the world weighed 300 pounds, everyone is overweight. It’s not measured relative to each other.
It will be interesting to watch how much impact drugs like Ozempic will have on these numbers. Of course they will be most available in the rich countries at first but that is where the problem is the most severe. By the 2030s some of these drugs will go generic and will become much cheaper and should be affordable to most of the world.
Just wait for climate change to cause massive global crop loss and the problem fixes itself.
The word “overweight” could in principle mean relative to the population average, but have you ever seen it used that way?
Exactly. “Overweight,” in this context (and in pretty much every context I’ve seen it) is in reference to what is considered to be a healthy weight range for a person, and not being “above the average weight.”
Somewhere, someone is hard at work manufacturing “Hello, my name is Slim” name tags.
No worries, I’m confident that climate-change-caused wars, genocides, pandemics, mass migrations, and famines will take care of the problem. That’s a far more certain trajectory than one in which fat and sugar are as cheap as dirt worldwide.
That’s definitely possible. Almost anybody can do that at least once, and probably a number of times. It’s consistently keeping weight off over an extended period of time that is, for most people, next to impossible; and often entirely impossible without otherwise screwing up their health. (Famine, which has been noted as a possibility in this thread, certainly screws up one’s health.)
In fact, back in 1998, they lowered the definition; thereby suddenly rendering a lot of people “overweight” who weren’t so under the old definition.
After the last famine ended I just put the weight straight back on.
Rather the opposite. It’ll kill the folks who can’t gain weight, and leave behind the ones who can survive famine and still get yuge.
There will be fewer humans. But they’ll be fatter humans.
Perhaps.
And that’s the problem. Humans evolved in a feast and famine environment where food was often scarce, which meant our bodies were programmed to store energy/calories for the next big famine event that rarely happens these days. Carrying an extra 10 lbs. isn’t really an issue. Carrying around an extra 50 or 100 lbs. is a problem. We need to reprogram our bodies to stop stockpiling body fat for the famine that is never coming. Moving from glucose burning to fat burning instead is just one way to do that.
[hijacking my own thread] But unfortunately, fat-burning keto-like diets are not good for one’s long term health:
This is a significant point that the link in the OP, as far as I can tell, ignores. Without knowing how the 51 percent projection is broken down, it’s hard to discern how much of an issue this would be. If the majority of that 51% is overweight, according to BMI, that really won’t pose too much of a problem. Half of the population being morbidly obese, however, would probably lead to a strain on health resources.
There is something called a healthy ketogenic diet that avoids many the problems of a “normal” keto diet. Lots of vegetables and some carbs are allowed in limited amounts.
I saw this article and had some doubts, but FWIW overweight is defined as an index>25 and obesity an index>30. The body-mass index is an easy calculation [weight in kg/(height in m)^2]. It is not “wrong”, but can be misinterpreted. As a power lifter, I have long had the goal to have an index bigger than my jeans size.
The number can perhaps be misinterpreted, especially for the muscular, but this does not change it or make it “wrong”. The 30% figure seems very high, I would think misinterpretation would be under 10%. The alternative is using a belly-button radius, which ideally should be less than half one’s height. But these labels are not that useful, unless there are changes that need to be made and this helps bring awareness to make those changes.
There is a lot to be said for reducing intake of sugars and products made mainly from flours. If someone loses a hundred pounds and gets off their diabetes medications, this would seem to be a big positive step despite some changes in lipid profiles. A lot of people can enjoy most foods in moderation. Some do well on a diet very low in carbohydrates, but for most people I think a more moderate reduction is better. Making an effort to choose healthier types and amounts of carbohydrates is prudent. Most would benefit from more vegetables and fibre. Eating whole fruit in its natural state should also be encouraged.