Obesity is the hidden elephant in the room. To a new study released by McKinsey, this costs two trillion dollars a year as 2.1 billion people globally are either overweight or obese. This is an epidemic, no less.
The press release of the study goes on :
Obesity is responsible for about 5 percent of all deaths a year worldwide, and its global economic impact amounts to roughly $2 trillion annually, or 2.8 percent of global GDP—nearly equivalent to the global impact of smoking or of armed violence, war, and terrorism.
And the problem—which is preventable—is rapidly getting worse. If the prevalence of obesity continues on its current trajectory, almost half of the world’s adult population will be overweight or obese by 2030.
So suddenly you are starting to care. Here is another reason we gotta do something as soon as possible. As I noted all the way back to 2009 that staying slim is good for the environment. There I wrote :
These are the conclusions of a recent study carried out by two specialists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
This was the topic of an interesting article my dad sent me on how obesity is bad for climate change. That’s right, on top of endangering the patient itself, obesity endangers the whole planet.
Indeed this medical condition means that more food is produced to answer the demand as well as more greenhouse gases emissions as cars are more used.
Among the solutions avocated is ditching the cars as they make us fat. I blogged last year about that very topic. In that article, I wrote :
A study published in the British Medical Journal with no less than 7534 participants have shown that” commuting by public or active transport modes was significantly and independently predictive of lower BMI for both men and women”
As Treehugger noted,” Men who take transit are about seven pounds lighter; women, about 5.5 pounds lighter.” So if you want to lose some weight, start walking, cycling or taking the bus to move around.
To conclude, I blogged twice on healthy food habits that wil help you either lose some weight or keep a healthy one. the articles are below.
Image credits : flickr