ROME (ITALPRESS) – By 2030, 70 percent of the world’s population will be affected by obesity and overweight. The latest data on adult and pediatric obesity released by the World Health Organization are worrying. Worldwide, 1 in 8 people live with obesity, highlighting a growing public health problem. Two and a half billion adults over the age of 18 are overweight, 890 million of whom are living with obesity.
Overall, nearly half of adults (43%) are overweight and 16% are living with obesity.
While obesity in adults has more than doubled since 1990, among adolescents the number of people with obesity has even quadrupled.
In Italy, nearly half the population (27 million) is overweight: one in two adults (over 47%) and 3 in 10 children or adolescents (27%). According to data from the Valter Longo Foundation, between the ages of 7 and 9, 4 out of every 10 children are even overweight.
In Europe, we are second only to Cyprus and almost at the same level as Greece and Spain, with a prevalence of overweight children in the South, where peaks of more than 43% of children are reached.
On the eve of World Obesity Day, Valter Longo, Professor of Biogerontology and Director of the Longevity Institute at the USC (University of Southern California) in Los Angeles, comments on the emergence of a real “epidemic of overweight and obesity that affects both adults and children, increasing the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. It is not only excess calories but also the consumption of food that accelerates aging that contributes to these diseases. In younger people, this condition is even more worrisome because it often drags into adulthood, predisposing to health problems as early as age 30-40.”
A cry of alarm especially to the younger segments of the population for a lifestyle change without which we will see “children doomed to a life of disease and less longevity than their parents,” he adds.
– ICNgroup press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
