Around the world, obesity is on the rise. A global uptick in body mass index, or BMI — a measure of whether a person’s weight is healthy for how tall they are — has coincided with rapid urbanization, leading to the assumption that urbanization is the main reason behind the global obesity epidemic. Now, a large new report reveals the rise of global BMI comes from people living in rural areas rather than people living in urban areas.
The finding contrasts theories that urban lifestyles contribute to the rise in obesity and suggests public health policies that stress food quality are needed. “More than 55 percent of the rise in BMI in the world in men and women has been due to a rise in rural populations, so this is entirely opposite to the current paradigm,” Majid Ezzati, a public health expert at the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, who led the new research, said in a press briefing.
