Publication
Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in
parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in
cities1,2
. This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is
one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity3–6
.
Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements
of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report
national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by
place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We
show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of
the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017—and more than
80% in some low- and middle-income regions—was due to increases
in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact
that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is
increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in
low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted
in a closing—and in some countries reversal—of the gap in BMI
between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries,
especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries,
we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women.
There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition
that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid
replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries
with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive
consumption of low-quality calories.
Description
Keywords
Obesity Body-mass index Rural area Urban area . Faculdade de Ciências Sociais
Citation
NCD Risk Factor Collaboration. (2019). Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults. Nature: international weekly journal of science. London. Vol. 569 (2019), p. 260-264. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1171-x
Publisher
Nature Research