The Irony of Global Obesity

Obesity is a growing problem worldwide, even in countries whose populations have in the past been enviably lean, as new research reports make clear.

In China, for example, about 18 million adults are obese and another 137 million are overweight, according to a study of 16,000 people published last week in The Lancet. Another report, in The New England Journal of Medicine, noted that in developing countries, “as many as 60 percent of households with an underweight family member also have an overweight one.”