With the abundance of fast food chain restaurants in every country, and the easy access to a quick, cheap meal, it comes as no shock that the number of obese children and adolescents is at an all-time high compared to a couple of decades ago.
Ten times as high to be exact!
The United States of America, some Caribbean countries like Puerto Rico, as well as Middle Eastern countries such as Kuwait and Qatar, came up next in line with obesity levels that are over 20% for the same age group as the Pacific Islands.
Credit: CNN
Majid Ezzati, who led the research and is a professor of global environmental health the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom stated that over the past 4 decades, the rates of obesity in children as well as adolescents have risen dramatically and are continuing to do so in low and middle income countries. In high-income countries, obesity has plateaued and evened out but is still at an unacceptably high rate. Majid Ezzati also stated that children nowadays start gaining weight at around the age of 5, unlike children of two generation past.
Credit: CNN
James Bentham, who is a statistician at the University of Kent and co-authored the paper, stated that obesity rates in children and adolescents are accelerating around South, East and Southeast Asia, and are still rising in other low and middle income countries.
While the average body mass index among adolescents and children has recently evened out in North America and Europe, it is still dangerous to be complacent as over one in five young individuals in the US is obese, and one in ten in the UK is obese. Obesity as a child carries over a likelihood of obesity as an adult, and this comes with many consequences and risks, including a higher risk of diabetes, some carcinomas (cancer) and cardiovascular diseases, with type 2 diabetes being a typically onset condition in adults.