The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 9
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- An additional nutritional challenge concerns people whose caloric intakes exceed their needs. Today, more than one billion people worldwide are overweight (with a bodily mass index (BMI) >25) and at least 300 million are obese (BMI >30). Overweight and obesity cause, worldwide, 2.8 million deaths, so that today 65 per cent of the world's population live in a country (all high-income countries and most middle-income countries) where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight. In a country such as the United States of America, this means that today's children could have shorter life expectancies than their parents. But obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) linked, in particular, to unhealthy diets are no longer limited to rich countries (see figures 1 and 2). It is estimated that by 2030, 5.1 million people will die annually before the age of 60 from such diseases in poor countries, up from 3.8 million today. Obesity and overweight affect 50 per cent or more of the population in 19 of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, but they have become public health challenges in all regions (see figure 2). Death and disease from NCDs now outstrip communicable diseases in every region except Africa, and it is expected that NCD deaths will increase globally by 15 per cent between 2010 and 2020-and by over 20 per cent in Africa, South-East Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. Moreover, NCDs are more rapidly fatal in poorer countries. In both South-East Asia and Africa, 41 per cent of deaths caused by high BMI occur under age 60, compared with 18 per cent in high-income countries. For society, the costs are huge, directly in medical care and indirectly in lost productivity. An important time lag exists between the onset of obesity and the increase in health-care costs, but it has been estimated for instance that the costs linked to overweight and obesity in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 2015 could increase by as much as 70 per cent relative to 2007 and could be 2.4 times higher in 2025. In countries such as India or China, the impact of obesity and diabetes is predicted to surge in the next few years. On average, a 10 per cent increase in NCDs results in a loss of 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Year
- 2012
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Food, Report to the HRC (2012), A/HRC/19/59, para. 9.
- Paragraph number
- 9
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