University of Zagreb

Faculty of Kinesiology

SUPPORTED BY:


Project details

Project title: Croatian Physical Activity in Adolescence Longitudinal Study

Project code:  9926

Leaderprof. dr. sc. Marjeta Mišigoj-Duraković

Institution: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Kinesiology

Duration01.12.2016 - 30.11.2020


Childhood and adolescent obesity rose...

The number of obese children and adolescents (aged 5 to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades, according to a new study led by Imperial College London and the World Health Organization (WHO). If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022,

The study is published in The Lancet ahead of World Obesity Day (11 October). It analysed weight and height measurements from nearly 130 million people aged over five (31.5 million people aged 5 to 19, and 97.4 million aged 20 and older), the largest number of participants ever involved in an epidemiological study. More than 1000 researchers contributed to the study, which looked at body mass index (BMI) and how obesity has changed worldwide from 1975 to 2016.

During this period, obesity rates in the world’s children and adolescents increased from less than 1% (equivalent to five million girls and six million boys) in 1975 to nearly 6% in girls (50 million) and nearly 8% in boys (74 million) in 2016. Combined, the number of obese 5 to 19 year olds rose more than tenfold globally, from 11 million in 1975 to 124 million in 2016. An additional 213 million were overweight in 2016 but fell below the threshold for obesity.

In Europe, girls in Malta and boys in Greece had the highest obesity rates, at 11.3% and 16.7% of the population respectively. Girls and boys in Moldova had the lowest obesity rates, at 3.2% and 5% of the population respectively.

How do Croatian children rank in these lists? Boys (14% obese) had the 49th highest obesity rate in the world (6th in Europe), while girls ranked 90th on the worlds childhood obesity list (11th in Europe).

Illustrative graphic representations can be found on NCDRisc web site.

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