Weight gain in rural areas is responsible for a lot of the global rise in obesity

Rates of obesity worldwide have nearly tripled since 1975, and the prevailing belief is that city living is to blame. But a major study that covers 112 million adults suggests that weight gain in rural areas is responsible for much of this increase.
Members of the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration — an international group of health scientists — analyzed over 2,000 studies of how body mass index (BMI) has changed around the world from 1985 to 2017. (BMI is a height-to-weight ratio that is a popular measure of obesity, though not without its flaws.) The results, published today in the journal Nature, show that during this time period, more than 55 percent of the rise in BMI globally came from rural populations — specifically rural…

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