Almost every country in the world now has serious nutrition problems, either due to over-eating leading to obesity or a lack of food leading to undernutrition, according to a major study published on Saturday.
Researchers behind the Global Nutrition Report, which looked at 140 countries, said the problems were “putting the brakes on human development as a whole” and called for a critical change in the response to this global health threat.
The report found that while malnutrition rates are falling globally, their rate of decrease is not fast enough to meet the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030.
More than 155 million children aged under five are stunted due to lack of nutrition, and 52 million are defined as “wasted" — meaning they do not weigh enough for their height, the report said.
At the other end of the spectrum, over-eating is taking a heavy toll on people of all ages worldwide: the report found that two billion of the world's seven billion people are now overweight or obese.
In North America, a third of all men and women are obese.
Worldwide, at least 41 million children under five are overweight, and in Africa alone, some 10 million children are now classified as overweight.
Donor funding for nutrition rose by just 2% to $867 million in 2015, the report found. It said funding needs to be "turbo charged” and called for a tripling of global investment in nutrition to $70 billion over 10 years.
