The Middle East and North Africa will be the centre of the world's youth obesity crisis by 2050, at which point more than half of the region's children and young people will be overweight, according to new forecasts.
Scientists expect the Middle East will overtake North America as the world's most out-of-shape region if "startling" trends in weight gain over the last 30 years continue. They warned of a "profound tragedy" at a global level that could bring "dire financial and societal costs" for future generations.
The burden could force poorer countries that have known hunger and food shortages to shift towards curbing overeating, even while some of their people are malnourished and their clinics and hospitals feel the strain. "The health impact is going to be devastating in those countries," said Susan Sawyer, an adolescent health professor at Australia's Murdoch Children's Research Institute, who worked on the study.
She said the Middle East was an area where scientists expect "particularly worrying" trends. "The Middle East and North Africa, together with Latin America and the Caribbean, are the two regions in the world where over the last 30 years we've seen the most rapid increases," she told The National.
"In that sense it's arguably not surprising that the forecasted rates are also very high there, and particularly worrying," she said. "In the high-income world, the patterns are not projected to grow as fast – if only because they've already reached a relatively high level of people who are overweight or obese."
Top of the table
The result is that the Middle East and North Africa are expected to stage an unwanted rise to the top of the rankings. By the middle of the century, 55 per cent of the region's young people (aged five to 24) will be overweight or obese, according to the projections.
That would be more than in the US and Canada, the region that currently tops the table, where the figure is expected to hit 51 per cent by 2050. Latin America, Australia and New Zealand would also be high up the rankings.
In some Gulf countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, it is expected that more than 70 per cent of young people will be overweight or obese. Researchers have previously warned that the costs of obesity in the UAE could rise to $12 billion a year in the next decade. Sedentary lifestyles and fast food are among the factors that have been blamed for poor health.
Toll of obesity
Around the world, an estimated 360 million young people will be obese by 2050 and a third of them will be living in either the Middle East and North Africa or in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the new findings, published in medical journal The Lancet.
"Even in high-income countries we certainly do not have the sort of health infrastructure that is able to respond to the current burden of overweight and obesity ... let alone in resource-poor countries which haven't even started really to get their heads around how best to respond to this growing burden of overweight and obesity," Prof Sawyer said.
She said healthy school meals could be one way to tackle both extremes at once. "The results suggest we've really failed up to now, but the risk of failing in the future is even more devastating."
The forecasts are based on data from 180 countries and territories, drawing on trends since 1990 and taking into account levels of wealth and education. Scientists define being overweight as having a Body Mass Index above 25 and obese as above 30.
They report that rates of people being overweight or obese have already more than doubled since 1990. "The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” said the study's main author Emmanuela Gakidou, a University of Washington health professor. She said governments could use the new estimates of future weight gain to "identify priority populations" in need of interventions and treatment.
Younger generations are believed to be gaining weight faster and becoming obese earlier than their parents. By 2050 more boys aged five to 14 will be obese than merely overweight, it is believed.
