Global obesity rates continue to climb

Despite massive public health campaigns, the rise in worldwide obesity rates continues to hurtle along like a freight train on greased tracks.

In 2014, more than 640 million men and women were obese (measured as a body mass index of 30 or higher). That’s up from 105 million in 1975, researchers estimate in the April 2 Lancet. The researchers analyzed four decades of height and weight data for more than 19 million adults, and then calculated global rates based on population data. On average, people worldwide are gaining about 1.5 kilograms per decade — roughly the weight of a half-gallon of ice cream.
But the road isn’t entirely rocky. During the same time period, average life expectancy also jumped: from less than 59 years to more than 71 years, George Davey Smith points out in a comment accompanying the new study. Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Bristol in England, boils the data down to a single, seemingly paradoxical sentence: “The world is at once fatter and healthier.”