This is the main conclusion of the latest study published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in which concerns about the healthiness of the planet’s inhabitants, whose obesity rates continue to grow, are exposed.
The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the United States and Ireland, suggests that governments could curb, and even reverse, the growing obesity epidemic in the world by taking measures to combat the consumption of fast food.
To do this, they compared both fast food transactions and the body mass index (BMI) of the inhabitants of 25 high-income countries in the period between 1999 and 2008 .
The conclusions were very clear: taking into account that a BMI of 30 is already considered obese, the results of the study revealed that the average BMI has increased from 25.8 to 26.4 in that period of almost 10 years.
“Unless governments take steps to regulate their economies, the invisible hand of the market will continue to promote obesity around the world, with disastrous consequences for the future of public health and economic productivity,” said Dr. Roberto De bluntly. Vogli from the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of California (USA).
Public policies focused on food and nutrition, promoting economic incentives for producers of healthy and fresh food, eliminating incentives for fast food industries and more strictly regulating the advertising of so-called “junk food” , could help the slowdown. of the obesity epidemic that plagues the world today.
