Report: Half of the world's population will be overweight by 2050

 New research predicts that global eating habits have put the world on track to overweight more than four billion people by 2050.

According to the British newspaper "Daily Mail", a new report was issued yesterday, indicating that 1.5 billion of these will suffer from obesity.

Meanwhile, 500 million people are likely to be underweight and on the verge of starvation.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact (PIK) found that if current trends in what and how people eat in different parts of the world continue, the already wide gaps in nutrition will grow increasingly over the next 30 years.

In order to predict how global nutrition will change in the coming decades, the first-of-its-kind study assessed trends in the types of foods people eat, how populations are growing, and how food is produced and wasted.

Since 1965, global consumption has shifted toward highly processed foods, high-protein meats, sugary products and carbohydrates.

Meanwhile, many residents were feasting on vegetables, plant foods, whole foods, and healthy starches.

This shift means more empty calories and high-fat diets that certainly increase weight, but do little to provide our bodies with energy.

Innovations in food science have made many of our meals processed. These processing methods are cheaper, faster, and less subject to the whims of weather and natural conditions, making them reliable, but in reality they are not the best for our health.

As a result, 29% of the world's population was already overweight by 2010, and 9% of them were considered obese, with a body mass index (BMI) above 30.

And between 2009 and 2010, 35.7% of American adults were already obese.

That number rose to 42.4% between 2017 and 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About 28% of the UK population is obese.

And rates are only rising in both countries and in many parts of the world.

By 2050, the Potsdam Institute Climate Impact report estimates that 16% of the world's population will be obese and half (45%) will be overweight.