The Whole World Is Fat and That Ends Up Costing 2 Trillion a Year

"Obesity used to be an issue primarily in well-off countries. It was one of those things flippantly dismissed as a "first-world problem." Now people are packing on the pounds all over the planet. In some fast-growing cities in China, for example, half the people are now overweight."

"A new report from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company finds that more than 2.1 billion people nearly 30 percent of the world's population are overweight (a bit chubby) or obese (just plain fat)."

"Over the last decade, no country in the world managed to trim its obesity prevalence. Some of the worst rates of obesity are now in the developing world."

"'It seems that many of the emerging markets that are on this phenomenally fast growth trajectory are on an even faster obesity trajectory,' says Richard Dobbs, the head of the McKinsey Global Institute and one of the authors of the obesity report."