17% of French people are now in a situation of obesity, and suffer from multiple associated pathologies.
- According to the WHO classification, we speak of overweight when the BMI is greater than 25 and obese when it exceeds 30.
- Obesity results from several factors: dietary, genetic and environmental.
In 2020, nearly one in two French people (47.3%) was overweight and/or obese, according to figures from a new Odoxa survey for The Obesity League. And it is obesity that is progressing the most – it has doubled since 1997. Today, 17% of French people are obese (including 6% of children aged 8 to 17).
Massive obesity has practically doubled in a decade, going from 1.1% in 2009 to 2% in 2020, and now concerns more than one million French people.
“A disease that ignores equality and social justice”
“Obesity is a disease that ignores equality and social justice, it is correlated with many socio-demographic factors, in particular age (9% obesity among 18-24 year olds compared to more than 19% among over 55), the social environment (9.9% obesity among executives against 18% among workers) and the territory (14.2% obesity in Ile-de-France against 22.1% in Hauts-de-France)”, comment the pollsters.
Finally, obesity is a problematic disease in terms of public health, because it combines with many other severe pathologies (18, potentially). Arterial hypertension and cardiovascular pathologies are thus twice as common in people with massive obesity as in the general population. For diabetes, the ratio is even 1 to 3.
The average BMI of a French adult is 25.5.
To have a repert, the average BMI of a French adult is 25.5, against 25.4 in 2012. 7.6% of French people have consulted a doctor for a weight problem in the last 12 months, i.e. 3.8 million people (successive confinements having caused numerous weight gains, in children as in adults). Finally, 2.8% of French people have undergone bariatric surgery by ring, sleeve or bypass.
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