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Health Check: One billion obese people

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One billion obese people

2024/03/06 GMT

BBC World Service - Health Check, One billion obese people

One in eight people worldwide are now obese, but that doesn’t mean they are better fed.

Global obesity trends; sleep deprivation, diet and and diabetes; screen time and language development in children; the best films for learning about global health.

More than one billion people in the world are now living with obesity. The number of people who are underweight has also fallen according to a new global study, but this does not necessarily mean that people are better fed. In some countries insufficient food has been replaced by food that does not contain the nutrition that people need, with obesity now the most common form of malnutrition in many places. Claudia Hammond talks to study author Professor Majid Ezzati about the results and what can be done to halt the trend of increasing global obesity.

Research has shown that sleep deprivation can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, while regularly eating fruit and vegetables can reduce the risk. Yet it wasn’t known whether a healthy diet could compensate for a lack of sleep. Now, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have discovered that people who eat healthily but sleep for less than six hours a day are still at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. GP Dr Ayan Panja joins Claudia in the studio to pick over the findings and talk about the importance of sleep to your health.

Ayan also brings news of a new study into screen time and language development in children. While this study found that screen time has a negative impact on children, previous studies have found that the right kind of television programme can be beneficial. Claudia and Ayan discuss the difficulties of finding answers to questions about the impact of screen time.

With the Oscars about to take place in Hollywood, we’ll be wondering what the best films are for learning about global health. Professor Madhukar Pai from McGill University in Canada uses movies in his teaching, and has even put together a list of over one hundred films that accurately portray health stories. He tells us what makes the perfect health movie.

And there’s more from British journalist Mike Powell as he prepares for his kidney transplant operation. 

(Photo: Police physical trainer Javier Ramirez (C) works with police officers at a police unit in Mexico City, 11 December, 2019, where 1,000 Mexico City police officers have joined a program to lose weight. Credit: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP)

Featuring clips from:

"Chernobyl"
Directed by Johan Renck, HBO/Sky UK

"Contagion"
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Participant Media/Imagenation Abu Dhabi/Double Feature Films

"How to Survive a Plague"
Directed by David France, Public Square Films/Ninety Thousand Words

"Bending the Arc"
Directed by Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos, Impact Partners

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