More than 60% of Russia's adults are overweight - head of Russian Federal Research Center of Nutrition, Biotechnology and Food Safety

MOSCOW. Oct 28 (Interfax) - More than 60% of Russia's adult population are overweight and more than 20% are obese; 10% of the country's children have obesity, Viktor Tutelyan, the head of the Russian Federal Research Center of Nutrition, Biotechnology and Food Safety, said.

"More than 60% of the adult population are overweight and [some] 22% are obese. We are concerned about children's obesity, 10% of the children already [are obese]," Tutelyan said at the congress National Healthcare.

According to Tutelyan's presentation, 17% of the people who are obese are men and 25% are women. Seventeen percent of the country's children are overweight.

The challenges that need to be addressed include insufficient micronutrients in the diet of the Russian population, excessive consumption of salt, insufficient consumption of vegetables and fruit, and also a limited range and volumes of domestically produced ingredients for specialized food products for preventative and treatment purposes (vitamins, prebiotics, food additives, and minerals).

Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said in September 40 million people were obese in Russia. This disease starts a cascade of other health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, etc., he said.

According to State Statistics Service (Rosstat), the number of obese people has increased the most in the age group 15-17, in which 3,683 out of every 100,000 people were obese in 2023.

Natalya Mokrysheva, director of the Russian Health Ministry's National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology, earlier said, citing research data, that one out of every three people (some 45 million people) was obese in Russia. Among them are people with heavy obesity, citizens with body weight index 30+, and also those who are pre-obese. She also said the situation among children was "catastrophic."