Over one in eight adults are now obese -- a ratio that has more than
doubled since 1975 and will swell to one in five by 2025, a major survey
reported Friday.
Of about five billion adults alive in 2014, 641 million were obese, the data showed -- and projected the number will balloon past 1.1 billion in just nine years.
The research warned of a looming crisis of "severe obesity" and disease brought on by high-fat, high-sugar diets causing blood pressure and cholesterol to rise.
"There will be health consequences of magnitudes that we do not know," author Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London told AFP.
The survey, published in The Lancet medical journal, claimed to be the most comprehensive of its kind conducted to date.
People are divided into healthy or unhealthy weight categories based on a universally-adopted measure dubbed Body Mass Index (BMI) -- a ratio of weight-to-height squared.
A healthy BMI ranges from 18.5 to 24.9.
One is considered underweight below 18.5, overweight from 25 up, and obese from 30 -- when the risk of diabetes, stroke, heart disease and some cancers escalates massively.
With a BMI of 35 one is categorised as severely obese, and from 40 upward as morbidly so.
Among men globally, obesity tripled from 3.2 percent of the population in 1975 to 10.8 percent in 2014 (some 266 million), and among women from 6.4 percent to 14.9 percent (375 million), said the survey -- 12.9 percent combined.
This was equivalent to the average adult, 18 and older, being 1.5 kilos (3.3 pounds) heavier every decade.
"If the rate of obesity continues at this pace, by 2025 roughly a fifth of men (18 percent) and women (21 percent) will be obese," according to a statement by The Lancet.
More than six percent of men and nine percent of women will be severely obese.
Of about five billion adults alive in 2014, 641 million were obese, the data showed -- and projected the number will balloon past 1.1 billion in just nine years.
The research warned of a looming crisis of "severe obesity" and disease brought on by high-fat, high-sugar diets causing blood pressure and cholesterol to rise.
"There will be health consequences of magnitudes that we do not know," author Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London told AFP.
The survey, published in The Lancet medical journal, claimed to be the most comprehensive of its kind conducted to date.
People are divided into healthy or unhealthy weight categories based on a universally-adopted measure dubbed Body Mass Index (BMI) -- a ratio of weight-to-height squared.
A healthy BMI ranges from 18.5 to 24.9.
One is considered underweight below 18.5, overweight from 25 up, and obese from 30 -- when the risk of diabetes, stroke, heart disease and some cancers escalates massively.
With a BMI of 35 one is categorised as severely obese, and from 40 upward as morbidly so.
Among men globally, obesity tripled from 3.2 percent of the population in 1975 to 10.8 percent in 2014 (some 266 million), and among women from 6.4 percent to 14.9 percent (375 million), said the survey -- 12.9 percent combined.
This was equivalent to the average adult, 18 and older, being 1.5 kilos (3.3 pounds) heavier every decade.
"If the rate of obesity continues at this pace, by 2025 roughly a fifth of men (18 percent) and women (21 percent) will be obese," according to a statement by The Lancet.
More than six percent of men and nine percent of women will be severely obese.
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