A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 12 per cent of the world’s adult population is obese and that number has been growing steadily over the last 35 years.
Not a single country has ever successfully reduced its obesity rate, according to the researchers, aside from a handful of places like Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo where years of war have led to famine or widespread malnourishment.
In Canada, about one in five adults was obese in 2015, the researchers found. That places Canada at about 80th worldwide. Pacific islands like American Samoa, where 62 per cent of adults are now obese, and Middle Eastern countries fared particularly badly.
People in East Asian countries were less likely to be obese. But almost all countries, regardless of whether they were rich or poor, saw obesity rates rising.
In some countries now, an individual might be under-nourished as a child and suffer health impacts like stunted growth as a result, and then grow up to be obese and suffer from different associated problems, said Ashkan Afshin, acting assistant professor of global health at the University of Washington, and the lead author of the study.
The problem is that no one has tackled the main drivers of obesity, he said.
“There is no specific change in the drivers of obesity, so we should expect obesity to grow.”
People are less physically active and consume more than they used to.
“We are both consuming more often and each time that we are consuming, generally we are consuming more energy,” Afshin said. “And we are spending less and less calories. Generally we have seen no major change in these factors.”
Arya Sharma, professor of medicine and chair in obesity research and management at the University of Alberta said he is not surprised by the study’s results.
“There’s been a lot of talk about obesity prevention. Not much has actually happened. So it’s not surprising to see the numbers continue to increase.”
And because of a lack of research into the root causes of obesity, he said, it’s hard to say what specifically might help.
“To be totally honest, we’re not spending enough money on researching the problem because we think we understand obesity and we don’t,” Sharma said.
It’s not as simple as just eating less and moving more, he said. And it’s possible that fixing the problem would require massive societal changes.
“Whether you’re talking about changing the food landscape, that’s certainly important,” Sharma said. “We also have to change the physical activity landscape. But to change both of those we’d probably have to change the whole landscape of everything: how people work, how people eat, how people sleep, how families interact. There’s a million things.”
So far, he said, the government has even had trouble doing simple things like limiting the marketing of sugary products to children. Health Canada only recently announced public consultations on the issue, after years of campaigning by health researchers.
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Prevention is key, said Afshin.
“Part of the story is about weight loss. Part of the story is the prevention of weight gain.”
Any strategy needs to address both sides, he thinks.
“People who are not currently affected by obesity should be targeted by an appropriate intervention to prevent weight gain.”
Unfortunately, said Sharma, there aren’t really any good examples of how to solve the problem.
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“There is not a single country that we can point to. I can’t even say that Canada could learn from Finland or Sweden or Holland or whatever. There’s many other places where we can say that, but in obesity unfortunately, nobody seems to have the solution.”
He hopes that more attention will be paid to obesity, as it affects millions of Canadians.
“If this was say, an infectious disease, we would be spending research dollars left, right and centre,” Sharma said. “We would be opening special clinics and whatnot. But because it’s obesity, people say, ‘Oh it’s just people being lazy or not being smart about their diets.’”
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