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GLOBALLY, THERE HAS been more than a ten-fold increase in the number of children and teenagers with obesity in the past four decades.
In Ireland, this is no different, with 10% of boys and 9% of girls obese, compared to just 1% in 1975.
Stats published in the Lancet said that 31% of boys, and 30% of girls, were overweight in 2016, compared to 10.1% and 8.8% in 1975.
The proportion of children and teenagers in Ireland has halved since 1975, falling from 12% to 6%.
We rank 79th out of 200 countries for the prevalence of obesity. We have fallen two places to 58th in the table of countries with the highest incidence of overweight teens.
Global problem
There has been an increase from 5 million obese girls in 1975 to 50 million in 2016, and from six million to 74 million boys, according to a new global analysis of trends in child and teen obesity in 200 countries.
Rates of child and adolescent obesity were highest (over 30%) in some islands in Polynesia, while around 20% were obese in the US and some countries in the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia) and the Caribbean (Bermuda and Puerto Rico).
The study, led by Imperial College London and the World Health Organisation, brought together data from 2,416 studies involving 128.9 million participants worldwide, including 31.5 million children and teens aged five to 19 years to estimate trends in body mass index (BMI).
Excessive weight gain in children and teens is linked to a higher risk and earlier onset of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, worse psychosocial and educational outcomes, and lifelong damages since weight loss is difficult to achieve.
“While average BMI among children and adolescents has recently plateaued in Europe and North America, this is not an excuse for complacency as more than one in five young people in the USA and one in 10 in the UK are obese,” study author Dr James Bentham of University of Kent said.
Additionally, rates of child and adolescent obesity are accelerating in east, south and southeast Asia, and continue to increase in other low and middle-income regions.
In addition to the 124 million children and adolescents classified as obese in 2016, 213 million children and teenagers were in the overweight range.
Preventing obesity
The authors of the study noted that additional work needs to be done across the world to ensure that obesity can be properly dealt with.
They said that policies to prevent childhood obesity in entire countries and communities need to be matched by improved treatments, such as behavioural therapy to change diet and exercise, screening and management of hypertension and liver problems, and in extreme cases, bariatric surgery.
“While there have been some initiatives led by governments, communities or schools to increase awareness about childhood and adolescent obesity, most high-income countries have been reluctant to use taxes and industry regulations to change eating and drinking behaviours to tackle child obesity,” Professor Majid Ezzati, study author from Imperial College London said.
Most importantly, very few policies and programmes attempt to make healthy foods such as whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables affordable to poor families.
In contrast
Despite the increase in child and adolescent obesity, globally more children remain moderately or severely underweight than obese, with 75 million girls moderately or severely underweight in 2016, along with 117 million boys.
Almost two-thirds of the world’s children and teenagers who are moderately or severely underweight lived in South Asia.
Meanwhile, the average BMI in 2016 was lowest for boys and girls in Ethiopia. It was also low in Niger, Senegal, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Cambodia.
Underweight among children and adolescents is linked to higher risk of infectious disease. For girls of childbearing age, it’s associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes including maternal mortality, delivery complications, preterm birth and slow growth.
Between 1975 and 2016, the prevalence of moderate and severe underweight decreased from 9.2% to 8.4% in 2016 for girls, and from 14.8% to 12.4% for boys. This means that the rate of increase in obesity in children and teens is greater than the rate of decline in undernutrition.
In conclusion, Ezzati said:
There is a continued need for policies that enhance food security in low-income countries and households, especially in South Asia.
“But, our data also show that the transition from underweight to overweight and obesity can happen quickly in an unhealthy nutritional transition, with an increase in nutrient-poor, energy-dense foods.
Our findings highlight the disconnect between the global dialogue on overweight and obesity, which has largely overlooked the remaining undernutrition burden.
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Best of luck to him , I will always have great respect for Hugo Chavez for trying to be a president for the common man and for sending the yank vultures and their puppets packing .
Absolutely 100% agree with you. Any one in any doubt should google John Pilgers documentary, the war on democracy. Chavez is a man of the people that big business want to see the back of.
Great documentary by Oliver Stone about Chavez “South Of The Border” worth a watch, tells how the US tried and failed to bring him down. Great interviews with him and other South American leaders about their refusal to be governed by US policy, it’s an eye opener.
Best wishes to him. He’s an inspiration.
don’t know much about Chavez,
but the fact that extreme right-wing yanks seem to hate him, makes me think he’s ok.
anyway – hope he defeats his cancer.
There is a very real possibility that his cancer was deliberately induced by the US military industrial complex in my opinion.
seriously? bit too much conspiracy perhaps?
Not really Simon. The CIA tired similar stuff with Fidel down the years.
They tried to give him cancer?
How do you give somebody cancer?
Exactly..
I can selectively quote parts of a random article from the internet too, first line under the heading… “Can you give someone cancer? If they’re healthy probably not”.
You want me to copy and paste entire articles here?
The point – and it’s embarrassingly obvious – is that while nobody knows whether his cancer was deliberately induced, it’s a possibility and a reasonable suspicion given the various ways the US tried to murder Fidel Castro down the years.
ha you quoted one part of an article to suit your own agenda! The US are capable of most things, so if they wanted rid of him I’m sure they could find a more effective way then giving him cancer, which your article goes onto say is a highly unreliable way of assassinting someone.
It’s highly unreliable yea but very discrete , I know it’s what I’d do it can’t be traced
A dose of radiation sufficient to appreciably increase cancer risk would undoubtably cause acute radiation sickness (about 3 to 5 sieverts).
Then, if the exposed person survives radiation sickness, there would be a ~10 year latency period before there’s an increased risk of Leukaemia, then if they don’t get Leukaemia, another 10 to 20 years would pass before there’s an increasing chance of solid cancers.
The maximum increase chance of cancer from radiation is ~40%, the risks are not higher as the exposed person would more likely die from radiation sickness at higher doses, they wouldn’t survive to get cancer years later.
Do you have a source for that, David?
Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors, Report 14, 1950–2003: An Overview of Cancer and Noncancer Diseases
The Japanese Life Span study is the gold standard, 130,000 atomic bombing survivors monitored since the mid-1950s, since Japanese doctors started to notice increased cases of leukaemia.
The Excess Relative Risk per Gray (roughly the same as a Sievert) is 0.42, since the baseline cancer rate is ~30%, this gives a cancer rate of 42.6% for 1 Gray dose.
For an additional increase of 40% (30+40%)= 70% cancer rate, the radiation dose would need to be massive, undoubtably accompanied with severe radiation sickness.
Where is that’s documentary pls love to see it
Here’s a great one filmed by two Irish reporters, they were in the Chavezs’ office when the coup happened. They stayed behind, when Chavez and his ministers fled; they said they wanted to film the revolution happening. They got both sides from the inside, it’s a real eye opener, an excellent documentry:
Venezuela has one of the most democratic systems in the world.
Here’s what former US President Jimmy Carter of the Nobel Prize-winning election monitoring Carter Center had to say about it:
“Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”
All Venezuelan expatriates get a vote. Those people are likely to vote for the opponents of Chavez, yet he still gives them the vote.
The people of Venezuela keep voting for Chavez, because he is of them.
It’s amazing that just because Chavez has stood up to the United States people make him out to some kind of hero. He presides over a massively corrupt country, which usually happens when one man resides in power way beyond what is healthy for any supposedly democratic country.
He keeps getting elected. Pesky democracy!
Because he has made it easier and easier for him to get elected. Himself and Putin have a lot in common.
At least he’s not owned and operated by Goldman Sachs, like BOTH of the selected candidates in the USA’s farcical overture to democracy.
That article doesn’t even back you up. Anybody that knows anything about cancer knows you can’t give somebody cancer.
Are you pretending to be dim or does it come naturally. Read. The. Comments. Again… S l o w l y !
I agree its unlikely but to rule if out is daft , best way to kill someone is to make it look like an accident.
Petr no need to get upset because you were wrong
Exactly, Kevin. Quite a simple point to grasp really.
A large dose of dioxins will induce cancer in most people. There are many carcinogenic compounds that can be administered covertly in food. It’s not science fiction
No, the amount of Dioxin required to greatly increase cancer risk would cause obvious symptoms – Chloracne. Just look at what happened to Viktor ‘s Yushchenko’s face after he was poisoned by Dioxin.
Caracas is one of the most dangerous places on earth. I suspect Damascus would be safer. Roaring inflation and shortages makes his rule not much of a success. It would be possible to have clinics in slums areas without wrecking the economy. He or his heir won’t be able to buy support for much longer.
I wish Mr Chavez all the best and I admire what he has done for working people in his country and the region. For too long the United States have treated South America as their own private plantation.
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