Obesity rates worldwide doubled in the last 30 years, even though blood pressure and cholesterol levels dropped, The Associated Press reports.
The findings, which were discovered in three new studies, will be published Friday in the British medical journal, The Lancet.
According to one of the studies, people in the Pacific Islands are the heaviest. In developed countries, Americans are the fattest and Japanese are the slimmest. There were only a few areas in the world where people did not put on weight, including central Africa and South Asia.
“Being obese is no longer just a Western problem,” Majid Ezzati, a professor of public health at Imperial College London and an author of one of the studies, told AP.
In 1980, about 5 percent of men and 8 percent of women worldwide were obese. By 2008, the rates were nearly 10 percent for men and 14 percent for women. In other words, out of the total world population, 205 million men and 297 million women were obese. An additional 1.5 billion adults were overweight.
According to AP, the researchers said they were concerned about how much worse the obesity problem could get.
