In this project, we highlight an ongoing problem of obesity around the world by presenting the growing trends of obesity rate and related factors. Obesity should not be ignored as something trivial because obesity is becoming one of the leading risk factors for early death and is responsible for 4.7 million deaths in 2017 alone.
Obesity used to be a problem only in the high-income countries, but it has recently become an emerging problem in the low-income countries as well. We first highlight this fatal problem of growing obesity rates across the world using multiple interactive and animated charts.
Obesity
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a body mass index (BMI) over 25 is considered overweight, and BMI over 30 is considered obese. BMI is defined as body weight over height squared.
Danger
Side effects of obesity include high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, and more.
In the map on the left and beeswarm chart on the right, we see the rates of adults who are obese across the world by country. It is true that high-income countries generally have higher obesity rates, but we can notice that the overall global trend has been increasing for the past few decades.
Click the Play button below to automatically iterate over the years. Or use the scroller to manually select a year.
Select the continents to be displayed on the Beeswarm chart using the check box. Click a country on the map to track. You can reset the country using the Reset button below. Hover over countries on map or beeswarm chart for detailed obesity percentages. Radius of circles in the beeswarm chart reflect population size.
You can adjust the spatial density of the beeswarm chart using the slider below. Lower spatial density value helps you study the continent-level trends, and higher spatial density value helps you observe the world-wide-level trends.
Obesity is one of the world’s biggest health problems as it is becoming a major risk factor for premature death. Total of 8% of global deaths were due to obesity in 2017 which is double the amount of deaths caused by obesity in 1990.
In this race bar graph, we show the top 12 leading factors of death by year across all countries and hope to highlight the increasing rank of obesity over time.
Use the Replay button below to restart the chart animation.
Okay, you might think that the increasing number of deaths by obesity might be due to the general increase in world population. Here, we show that not only the count, but also the share of death due to obesity has been increasing globally as well.
Share of death due to obesity is increasing in all continents, but we can see that around 15% of death is due to obesity in middle-income countries such as those in Central Asia or Eastern Europe, whereas the rate is around 10% for high-income countries such as Australia or Canada.
Use the Play button or the scroller below to iterate over the years.
Select the area to zoom to using the check box below. Click a country of interest on the map, and reset using the Reset button.
Excess energy sources is one of few reasons for an increase in obesity, which can happen either from excess energy intake or lack of energy usage. Calories is the standard unit we use to refer to the energy we get from food or drink sources.
In this portion of the project, we look at the correlation between obesity and calories intake. We find that average calorie consumption has also increased in the past decades, but we need to keep in mind that a food source with higher numerical calorie value doesn’t definitely indicate it will lead to more weight gain; many studies suggest that nutrient composition is a more crucial determining factor of weight gain than numerical calorie values.
Calorie
A calorie is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. Calories on the Nutrition Facts show the amount of (kilo)calories the specific item contains.
Empty Calories
Foods with empty calories are primarily composed of sugar, fats, oils, or alcohols. Although they do provide food energy, they have little to no nutrition values.
We present a Gapminder-inspired chart to study the correlation between obesity and caloric supply. We can identify that generally, both daily caloric supply and obesity have increased significantly over the years. However, as expected, there are counterexample countries that had an increase in obesity rate, but decrease in caloric supply. As a result, we conclude that there is a significant relationship between obesity and caloric supply, but increase in caloric supply isn’t the sole reason that describes the increase in obesity.
Use the Play button or the scroller below to iterate over the years.
Hover on the circles to check out which country each circle represents. Circle radii reflects population size.
Again, you can use the check box and search box below to adjust the chart.
The multi-line charts below provide the change in obesity and daily caloric supply at a country level; we can better observe the yearly trends of a specific country of interest. Use the charts below to discover which countries had an increase in both obesity and daily caloric supply, and which had an increase in obesity but decrease in caloric supply. We suggest looking up the United States and Venezuela as examples to start with.
Why do you think some countries had an increase in obesity rate, but not in daily caloric intake? We argue that nutrient composition of the calories should be investigated here. While it is a good standard, lower caloric intake doesn’t guarantee freedom from obesity.
Hover over the lines on the Change in Obesity chart to see the respective Change in Calories.
Select continents to be displayed using the check box below.
You can also use the search box (type or select) to lock onto a desired country. Note that you cannot hover on the chart when a country is selected in the search box.
This project presents the global problem of increase in obesity, as well as the trend of growing caloric supplies that has a significant correlation with obesity rates. We hope you are also aware of this critical problem after looking at our visualizations.
Protect yourself from obesity by engaging in physical activities and managing your nutrition.