Healthier diets will help curb the spread of non-communicable diseases

While world hunger rose in 2017 for a third consecutive year, we are also observing an unprecedented rise in overweight, obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo said today. 

Speaking at the Third High-Level Event on Non-Communicable Diseases taking place on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly, Semedo sounded the alarm on the need to reverse current trends where more than one in every eight adults in the world is obese and over 38 million children under five are overweight. 

 "Today we are witnessing the globalization of obesity," said Semedo. "Our increasingly poor diets have become one of the major risk factors of premature adult deaths."  

Unhealthy diets are closely linked with non-communicable diseases - which include heart attacks, strokes, cancers and diabetes -  and contribute to six of 10 the risk factors of the Global Burden of Disease. Not only do non-communicable diseases cause human suffering, they hinder economic and social development, derail GDP, weigh heavily on health care costs and contribute to poverty. Equally worryingly, non-communicable diseases disproportionately affect people in low- and middle-income countries.  

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