Not good for global health (Image: Peter Reali/Plainpicture)
The largest ever study into the state of the world’s health has revealed that, for the first time, the number of years of healthy living lost as a result of people eating too much outweigh the number lost by people eating too little.
The Global Burden of Disease report – a massive research effort involving almost 500 scientists in 50 countries – also concludes that we have finally got a handle on some common infectious diseases, helping to save millions of children from early deaths. But collectively we are spending more of our lives living in poor health and with disability.
“The Global Burden of Disease 2010 is the most comprehensive assessment of human health in the history of medicine,” says Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, in which the report will be published. “It provides insights into human health that are comparable in scope and depth to the sequencing of the human genome.”
The report assessed the prevalence of diseases and causes of death across the globe in 2010, and compared these to data collected in 1990 to identify any trends.
For the first time on a global scale, being overweight has become more of a health problem than lack of nutrition. In 1990, undernutrition was the leading cause of disease burden, measured as the number of years of healthy life an average person could expect to lose as a result of illness or early death.
Read the full article here at Newscientist.com.