AFP

• A massive study of 1,68,000 people across 63 countries found 25% of them to be obese. An additional 35% were classified as overweight

Paris, Nov 7: A quarter of men and women in 63 countries were found to be obese in a massive study of more than 168,000 people, France’s top medical research institute said on Monday November 5.

Of 168,159 adults aged 18 and 80 examined in 2005, 24% of the men and 27% of the women were clinically obese.

An additional 40% of men and 30% of women were classified as overweight according to the study, published last week in the US Journal of the American Heart Association.

“This is the largest study of this kind every carried out that gives a ‘snapshot’ measure of obesity using the same methods across the world,” said lead researcher Beverly Balkau, a scientist at France’s National Institute for Health and Medical Research.

“The results show that we are facing a true epidemic: between 50% and 66% of the world’s population is either overweight or obese,” she said in a release.

Balkau called on governments to be more aggressive in promoting physical exercise and balanced diets.

The benchmark for obesity is the body-mass index (BMI), defined as one’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of one’s height in meters.

A BMI from 18.5 up to 25 is considered in the healthy range, from 25 up to 30 is overweight, and 30 or higher is obese.

The rate of obesity varied from one country to the next, ranging from seven% for both sexes in East and Southeast Asia to 36% for men and women in Canada.

Obesity levels for women topped out at 38 and 40% in the Middle East and Africa. But even in Asia, the proportion of the adult population that was overweight was roughly the same as in other countries with higher rates of obesity.

Lower levels of obesity in South and East Asia “are not necessarily reassuring, as the impact of adiposity” — the technical term for excess fat — “is rising and acute in certain populations,” the study said.