More than 600 million adults weighed in as obese. Photo / 123RF
A study has found a third of the world's population is obese or overweight in a "disturbing global public health crisis".
In 2015, 2.2 billion people were dying of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and other ailments linked to excess weight. The figure, equal to 30 per cent of the world's
population, brought the rate of deaths related to being overweight up 28 per cent since 1990.
Christopher Murray, one of the authors of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said "People who shrug off weight gain do so at their own risk."
The study, which covered 195 countries, found 108 million children and more than 600 million adults weighed in as obese, having a body mass index (BMI) above 30.
Fatalities in the group were over 60 per cent, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington found.
