Bloomberg’s Obesity Claim
Posted on March 29, 2013
"Public health experts have been predicting for some time that unhealthy lifestyles would surpass infectious diseases as a major killer in the developing world. An April 6, 1993, United Press International report said that the WHO estimated that 45 percent of deaths in developing countries were due to unhealthy living, but that would increase to 60 percent by 2015. Unhealthy living would account for 75 percent of deaths in industrialized countries, the WHO said.
A few years later, in 1997, the WHO again said this shift in global health was occurring: “Indeed, overweight and obesity are now so common that they are replacing the more traditional public health concerns such as undernutrition and infectious diseases as some of the most significant contributors to ill health,” it said in a report on a 1997 meeting on obesity in Geneva. In a 2004 report, the organization said that “a profound shift” had happened in the causes of death and illness in developed countries and was under way in developing nations, as noncommunicable diseases increased.
That’s the shift the Global Burden of Disease Study noted in its 2010 report. And the one Bloomberg could accurately describe as having occurred “over the past 20 years,” not “for the first time … this year,” as he has repeatedly said."
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