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[00:00.28]A new report says there are now more obese people in the world
[00:05.40]than there are underweight people.
[00:09.44]Researchers from Imperial College London wrote the report.
[00:14.16]Their findings were published in the British medical journal The Lancet.
[00:19.04]The researchers examined health records
[00:22.76]from about 20 million people
[00:25.60]for what they called the "world's biggest obesity study."
[00:30.60]Obesity is a condition in which the body stores large, unhealthy amounts of fat.
[00:38.16]Obese individuals are considered overweight.
[00:42.32]For the study, the researchers compared the body measurements of almost 20 million adults.
[00:50.48]They found that from 1975 to 2014,
[00:55.68]global obesity rates for men increased
[00:59.72]from 3.2 percent of the population to 10.8 percent.
[01:07.04]For women, it rose from 6.4 percent to 14.9 percent.
[01:14.20]They estimate that in 2014 there were 266 million obese men
[01:21.92]and 375 million obese women worldwide.
[01:27.36]That represents about 9 percent of the more than 7 billion people alive today.
[01:35.92]The study found that more than 2.3 percent of men
[01:40.36]and 5 percent of women are considered severely obese.
[01:46.20]A severely obese individual has a body mass index
[01:51.16](or BMI) of over 35 kilograms per square meter.
[01:57.24]BMI is a way to measure a person's height compared to their weight.
[02:04.08]The study also found that about 1 percent of men
[02:08.56]and 2 percent of women are considered "morbidly obese."
[02:14.56]Such people have difficulty with simple activities because they are overweight.
[02:21.56]The researchers say there are now 55 million morbidly obese adults worldwide.
[02:30.44]Majid Ezzati is the chief writer of the report.
[02:34.88]He works at the Imperial College School of Public Health.
[02:40.08]He writes that "the number of people across the globe
[02:43.56]whose weight poses a serious threat to their health is greater than ever before.
[02:49.40]He adds that this epidemic of severe obesity
[02:54.16]is too extensive to be tackled with just medications.
[03:00.40]He says coordinated global initiatives are needed to tackle this crisis.
[03:06.67]These initiatives include looking at the "price of healthy food compared to unhealthy food,
[03:13.28]or taxing high sugar and highly-processed foods."
[03:18.00]The researchers warn if the problem of obesity worsens,
[03:23.52]18 percent of men and 21 percent of women will be obese by 2025.
[03:31.76]The study found that China has the most obese people of any country
[03:37.60]and the United States has the largest number of severely obese people.
[03:43.76]The researchers also studied the number of people
[03:47.00]who are said to be underweight in different countries.
[03:51.01]They said underweight levels have dropped from 14 percent
[03:54.95]to 9 percent among men,
[03:57.28]and from 15 percent to 10 percent among women.
[04:02.56]About a fourth of the world's underweight people live in India and Bangladesh.
[04:08.12]I'm Anna Matteo.
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