In Montenegro, 20 percent of men are obese, while 12 percent of women are overweight, according to the latest data from the global study "Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022".
"What we often observe from our point of view, we have not yet proven, is that our population has more muscle mass compared to other populations, and therefore, if we compare our obesity with obesity in other populations, it may be that this muscle mass affects to make us fatter than we are," explains prof. Dr. Stevo Popović, from the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education.
However, it is worrying that we have more and more obese children.
"What we don't have is a school snack. And our children at school take anything. So they don't have organized meals, they don't have a message from the state that the state cares about them in terms of providing them with at least a healthy school meal," said Dr. Enisa Kujundzic from Institute for Public Health of Montenegro.
The latest global study warns that more than a billion people are currently living with obesity, and that every eighth person is obese.
"The most obese are in American Samoa, where between 70 and 80 percent are obese. This is truly incredible. As for Montenegro, we do not have such alarming data. It is interesting that the Americans are in tenth place, the Chinese in eleventh and the Indians in nineteenth," he added.
In contrast to the eighties, when we had more problems with obesity in cities than in rural areas, the situation is the opposite today.
"Through various influences, primarily through education and raising the awareness of people from urban areas, they slowed down the growth of obesity, not to say, stopped it, and the opposite happened in rural areas. People in rural areas began to live the lifestyle of urban people, and they did not take into account enough", he said and added that the state must deal more with prevention.
"We have a very inconvenient opponent. Because what you do today manifests itself only in the period to come, and we are not aware of it," he concluded.
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