A new report says there are now more obese people in the world than there are underweight people.
Researchers from Imperial（皇家）College London wrote the report. Their findings were published in the British
medical journal The Lancet（《柳叶刀》）.
The researchers examined health records from about 20 million people for what they called the “world’s biggest
obesity study.”
Obesity is a condition in which the body stores large, unhealthy amounts of fat. Obese individuals are considered
overweight.
For the study, the researchers compared the body measurements of almost 20 million adults. They found that from
1975 to 2014, global obesity rates for men increased from 3.2 percent of the population to 10.8 percent. For women, it rose
from 6.4 percent to 14.9 percent. They estimate that in 2014 there were 266 million obese men and 375 million obese
women worldwide. That represents about 9 percent of the more than 7 billion people alive today.
The study found that more than 2.3 percent of men and 5 percent of women are considered severely obese. A severely
obese individual has a body mass index (or BMI) of over 35 kilograms per square meter. BMI is a way to measure a
person’s height compared to their weight.
The study also found that about 1 percent of men and 2 percent of women are considered “morbidly（病态地）obese.”
Such people have difficulty with simple activities because they are overweight.
