Obesity among young people is continuously increasing. Above all, male students reveal an increase that causes concern, going from 10 percent in 2017 to 18 percent in 2024. Girls, although showing more stable growth, go from 8 percent to 10 percent in the same period. A phenomenon that is strongly associated with a reduction in physical activity and an increase in the consumption of pornography on the Internet. This is what emerges from the survey by the Foresta Foundation, which highlights a link between obesity and sexual dysfunction in young males.
With numbers in hand, obese students are in fact twice as likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction than those of normal weight, with an impact of 20 percent versus 10 percent. This data alarms experts (the Foresta Foundation itself, as part of its prevention program, offers male students the opportunity to carry out free andrological visits to evaluate their fertility and prevent any critical issues related to excess body weight), which underline how an unhealthy lifestyle – characterized by increased body weight and lack of physical activity – can compromise sexual health.
A further element associated with obesity is the family context: young people who come from families with divorced (or separated) parents reveal a higher incidence (22 percent) compared to those who live with parents together (15 percent). Another interesting data that emerged from the Foresta Foundation’s survey is the increase in the consumption of online pornography among obese students: 34 percent of them admit to watching pornographic content every day (compared to 21 percent of normal weight students).
Food insecurity and obesity
According to the Global Report on Food Crises 2024, around 282 million people suffered from acute food insecurity in 2023. As UNICEF illustrates, 181 million children – that is, one in four children under the age of five – live in severe food poverty (with up to a 50 percent greater chance of suffering from wasting, a potentially lethal form of malnutrition). Catherine Russell, director general of Unicef, points out: “Children who consume only two food groups a day, for example rice and a little milk, are more likely to suffer some serious form of wasting.”
At the same time, however, childhood obesity is increasing worldwide. The United Nations Children’s Fund recalls that, in 2022, 37 million children under 5 years of age were overweight (5.6 percent of the total). According to the report “Levels and trends in child malnutrition”, the joint estimates on child malnutrition by Unicef, the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group, in Asia there were 17.7 million children under 5 years of age who were overweight, in Africa 10.2 million, in Latin America and the Caribbean 4.2, in Europe 2.6 million, in Oceania 0.2 million.
And again, in high and middle-high income countries – where 31 percent of every child in the world under the age of 5 lives – 48 percent of all children affected by overweight live. In Southern Europe, 500,000 children were overweight in 2022 (8.3 percent of children under 5). Hence the importance of the message that Unicef addresses to parents: “Shaping your child’s eating habits can be fun and healthy, not only for him, but for the whole family”.
Eat well to grow well
Having access exclusively to unhealthy foods right from conception greatly increases the risk of obesity (a chronic disease which, as the Istituto Superiore di Sanità reminds us, “increases the risk of many non-communicable diseases, including tumors, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus type 2 and chronic respiratory diseases”. Furthermore “it has been observed that people with obesity have an increased risk of complications and mortality in the case of Sars-Cov-2 infection”).
There’s more. According to research visible on Jama Pediatricsin the United States, those born in low-income neighborhoods are 50 percent more likely to suffer from obesity as children and adolescents. Conducted on over 28,000 American children, the study – coordinated by Professor Izzuddin Aris of Harvard Medical School, in Boston – focused on neighborhoods classified as low-income and with reduced access to food (where the nearest supermarket is about 800 meters away meters from homes in urban areas, and over 16 kilometers in rural areas).
The analysis showed that living in these neighborhoods during pregnancy and in the first years of life increases the risk of being obese (even seriously) by 50 percent during childhood and adolescence. As well as having a higher body mass index at the ages of 5, 10 and 15 years. According to Professor Aris, it is essential to act precisely in these neighborhoods to allow families access to quality food, stimulating the opening of supermarkets and minimarkets that help them eat healthy.