Last year, 124 million children and teens worldwide were obese—a number more than 10 times higher than the rate in 1975—and another 213 million were overweight, according to a new study led by Majid Ezzati, adjunct professor of global health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor and chair in Global Environmental Health at Imperial College London.
According to the study, roughly 5.6% of the world’s girls and 7.8% of boys are obese. The highest rates were among Pacific Island countries, where more than 30% of children and teens were obese. The researchers found that in the U.S., more than 20% of youth were obese. At the other end of the spectrum, 192 million children and teens worldwide were estimated to be moderately or severely underweight.
“This study is an important wake-up call for countries where childhood obesity is increasing rapidly, especially in parts of Asia where the economy is still developing quickly and the prevalence of childhood obesity is rising,” Frank Hu, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and Chair, Department of Nutrition, who was not part of the research, told CNN.
Other Harvard Chan authors included Goodarz Danaei, Yanping Li, the late Dimitrios Trichopoulos, Peter Ueda, and Damaskini Valvi.
Read CNN article: Ten times more children and teens obese today than 40 years ago