Worldwide Obesity Costs Have Soared In Recent Years

Worldwide Obesity Costs Have Soared In Recent Years

A recent study by McKinsey Global Institute released to the public this Thursday announced that the cost of obesity on a global scale has just passed the $2 trillion a year mark. This puts it at the same level with alcoholism and just under the cost of smoking.

The study classified obesity as part of the top three preventable social problems of world economics. Researchers have estimated that the cost of obesity has reached approximately 2.8 percent of global gross domestic product.

Other figures from the study are just as shocking putting obesity’s economic impact just under smoking and as high as all forms of armed violence, war as well as terrorism which only go as high as $2.1 trillion. Obesity is also nearly twice as expensive as all global military spending which was estimated around $1.75 trillion in 2012.

The study said that nearly 30 percent of the world’s population or 2.1 billion people are either obese or overweight. They constitute a whopping 15 percent of all health care costs in developed countries.

The study also warns that if nothing is done to curb the current growth, by 2030 nearly half of the world population will be obese or overweight. The authors of the study said that any efforts to deal with the problem in the past were useless with no significant results and that a systematic approach is urgently needed.

Posted by George Daniels on Tuesday November 25 2014, 4:16 AM EDT. Ref: cbs. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0