Nearly One-Quarter of the World Will be Obese by 2045

Obesity If current trends continue, nearly one-quarter of the world’s population will be obese by 2045. And one in eight people will have type 2 diabetes, research suggests. Alongside those bulging waistlines, global rates of type 2 diabetes will jump from 9 percent to 12 percent over the next 22 years, placing an even greater burden on already strained health systems, scientists in Denmark and England reported. “The global prevalence of obesity and diabetes is projected to increase dramatically unless prevention of obesity is significantly intensified,” according to Dr. Alan Moses, of Novo Nordisk Research and Development in Soborg, Denmark. “These numbers underline the staggering challenge the world will face in the future in terms of numbers of people who are obese, or have type 2 diabetes, or both,” he added in a news release from the European Congress on Obesity. In addition to the medical challenges, “the costs to countries’ health systems will be enormous,” Moses said. RELATED: Why Can’t I Lose Weight? No ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach For the study, researchers analyzed World Health Organization data for all countries. The investigators divided each population into different groups based on age and body mass index (BMI) in order to calculate the...