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Junk food and sugary drinks are taking an enormous toll on children around the world, with soaring numbers who are obese and millions developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure previously seen only in adults, data has revealed.

Children were facing crippling illnesses and shortened lives because of the spread of the heavily marketed fast-food culture, experts said, and health services around the world would struggle to cope. They predicted that the UN target to stop the rise of childhood obesity by 2025 would be missed.

The three countries with the highest child obesity rates were the South Pacific island nations of Kiribati, Samoa and Micronesia. Among the more populous countries facing the worst scenarios were Egypt - where more than a third (35.5%) of children aged five to 17 were overweight or obese in 2013 - Greece (31.4%), Saudi Arabia (30.5%), the United States (29.3%), Mexico (28.9%) and the UK (27.7%).

More than 3.5 million children now had type 2 diabetes, which was once unknown in this age group and can lead to horrible complications in later life, such as amputations and blindness. The World Obesity Federation, which compiled the data, predicted that number would rise to 4.1 million by 2025.

About 13.5 million children have impaired glucose tolerance, which is a precursor to diabetes. Around 24 million have high blood pressure and more than 33 million have fatty liver disease as a result of obesity, which is more often associated with alcoholism and can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer.

If anything, the experts said, the figures were an under-estimate because they were based on the numbers of obese children, and some who were classified as overweight would also have the diseases.

The figures are alarming for rich and poor countries alike, signalling soaring medical bills to treat the coming epidemic of disease. But the WOF experts who compiled the data said that, while rich countries were struggling, poorer countries were ill-equipped to cope.

"These forecasts should sound an alarm bell for health service managers and health professionals," said Tim Lobstein, the policy director of the WOF. "They will have to deal with this rising tide of ill health following the obesity epidemic.

"In a sense, we hope these forecasts are wrong: they assume current trends continue, but we are urging governments to take strong measures to reduce childhood obesity, and meet their agreed target of getting the levels of childhood obesity down to 2010 levels before we get to 2025."

Childhood obesity incidences

The experts, whose findings were published in the Pediatric Obesity journal, said that by 2025, 49 million more children would be obese or overweight than in 2010 - a total of 268 million, of which 91 million alone would be obese.

Lobstein, one of the authors of the paper published ahead of World Obesity Day next Tuesday, said the food children were eating was at the heart of the problem and that in poor countries, obesity and stunting went hand in hand.

"We find that the large majority of children suffering excess bodyweight are in low- and middle-income countries. Following the recent evidence from the World Bank on the continuing high levels of stunting in children in underdeveloped regions of the world, it is obvious that something is severely wrong with the way our food supplies are developing," he said.

"You cannot replace contaminated water with Coca-Cola or Chocolate Nesquik, or a lack of good meals with a pack of fortified noodles, and still expect children to grow healthily. Breastfeeding is rapidly giving way to infant formula in large areas of Asia where markets have tripled in value in a decade - an area where we have seen some of the most rapid increases in overweight and obesity.

"Stunting and obesity are part of a continuum of poor nutrition, and can be found together in the same communities, the same families, and even the same individual children. Health is a key factor in sustainable development, and healthy food supplies are essential for economic development. Healthy food supplies are also a basic human right for this and the next generation."

The WOF president, Prof Ian Caterson, called for governments to take tough regulatory action to stop junk food companies targeting children.

"The obesity epidemic has reached virtually every country in the world, and overweight and obesity levels are continuing to rise in most places," he said. "Common risk factors, such as soft drink consumption and sedentary environments, have increased. Fast food advertising continues to really influence food choices and what is eaten, and increasing numbers of families live in urban environments without access to space to exercise or time to exercise."

In the last 10 years, consumption of sugary drinks worldwide increased by a third. More than half of the world's population live in urban areas, and 80% of young people aged 11-17 fail to get sufficient physical activity.

"If governments hope to achieve the WHO target of keeping child obesity at 2010 levels, then the time to act is now. Governments can take a number of actions to help prevent obesity, including introducing tough regulations to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy food, ensuring schools promote healthy eating and physical activity, strengthening planning and building rules to provide safe neighbourhoods, and monitoring the impact of these policies."
Additional reporting by Pamela Duncan
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Junk food shortening lives of children worldwide, data shows

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Junk food and sugary drinks are taking an enormous toll on children around the world, with soaring numbers who are obese and millions developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure previously seen only in adults, data has revealed.

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The way that sick children are taught about their condition is outdated and often doesn't cater to their needs. Dom Raban from Corporation Pop is hoping to change that, through the development of an app that uses artificial intelligence to answer any questions children may have about their care in real-time.

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The way that sick children are taught about their condition is outdated and often doesn't cater to their needs. Dom Raban from Corporation Pop is hoping to change that, through the development of an app that uses artificial intelligence to answer any questions children may have about their care in real-time.

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America's obesity crisis is getting worse, according to a new report that shows that obese Americans now outnumber overweight ones.

As of 2012, there were 67.6 million Americans age 25 and older who were obese, and 65.2 million who were overweight, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. The study was recently published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal.

"This is a wake-up call to implement policies and practices designed to combat overweight and obesity," Li Yang, one of the co-authors of the study, said in a statement.

The researchers used data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2007 to 2012 to determine the body mass index (BMI) of the study's sample size of more than 15,200 people. Those with a BMI of between 25 to 29.9 were considered overweight and those with a BMI of over 30 were considered obese.

By their calculations, almost 75% of men and 67% of women were struggling with their weight. Some 37% of women were obese, and 30% overweight. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to be overweight (40%) than obese (35%).

Many argue that BMI is not the best way to measure obesity. Even the CDC admits that while "BMI can be used for population assessment of overweight and obesity" and can be used as "a screening tool for body fatness", it is not diagnostic.

So why is it still used? "Because calculation requires only height and weight, it is inexpensive and easy to use for clinicians and for the general public," according to the CDC.

Nonetheless, the increase in the number of Americans struggling with their weight is of serious concern to doctors. America's weight has been trending upward for a number of years. According to Gallup - which also based its findings on BMI - the US obesity rate went from 25.5% in 2008 to 27.1% in 2013 to 27.7% in 2014.

Obesity can lead to many different health complications, such as diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and heart problems.

"Obesity is going to surpass cigarette smoking as the leading cause of the cancer deaths in the US," Mitchell Roslin, chief of bariatric surgery at Lenox Hill hospital, told CBS. According to him, obesity is increasingly a problem among young Americans. "This generation is not going to outlive their predecessors."

This is not just a problem in the US.

In Britain, obesity is currently the cause of one in five cancer deaths and could become responsible for more deaths than smoking within 10 to 15 years, according to Jennifer Ligibel of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University.

"The average weight of our citizens is increasing dramatically," she said. "We've really got a critical mass of evidence where we see this relationship: the heavier people are more at risk."
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Report shows overweight Americans headed toward more severe obesity

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America's obesity crisis is getting worse, according to a new report that shows that obese Americans now outnumber overweight ones. As of 2012, there were 67.6 million Americans age 25 and older who were obese, and 65.2 million who were overweight, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis.

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The team noted they measured just BMI and not body fat, but most obese Americans have too much fat.

Men who smoked were thinner, the team found. "For women, there were no significant differences by smoking status, but those with education beyond high school were significantly less likely to be obese," they wrote.

The second study found 17 percent of children and teens are obese and 5.8 percent were extremely obese. Obesity in kids is measured a little bit differently - it's how heavy they are compared to other kids the same age and height. Those weighing more than 95 percent of kids the same age are considered obese.

Obesity has decreased a little among the youngest children, the researchers noted, but it's still going up among teens.

It's not clear why obesity continues to worsen, despite many studies trying to put a finger on it.

"Numerous foundations, industries, professional societies, and governmental agencies have provided hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to support basic science research in obesity, clinical trials and observational studies, development of new drugs and devices, and hospital and community programs to help stem the tide of the obesity epidemic," the journal's editors, Dr. Jody Zylke and Dr. Howard Bauchner, wrote in a commentary.

"The obesity epidemic in the United States is now 3 decades old, and huge investments have been made in research, clinical care, and development of various programs to counteract obesity. However, few data suggest the epidemic is diminishing," they added.

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America's obesity epidemic hits a new high

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The team noted they measured just BMI and not body fat, but most obese Americans have too much fat. Men who smoked were thinner, the team found. "For women, there were no significant differences by smoking status, but those with education beyond high school were significantly less likely to be obese," they wrote.