Health Check

More than one billion people in the world are now living with obesity. The number of people who are underweight has also fallen according to a new global study, but this does not necessarily mean that people are better fed. In some countries insufficient food has been replaced by food that does not contain the nutrition that people need, with obesity now the most common form of malnutrition in many places. Claudia Hammond talks to study author Professor Majid Ezzati about the results and what can be done to halt the trend of increasing global obesity.Research has shown that sleep deprivation can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, while regularly eating fruit and vegetables can reduce the risk. Yet it wasn’t known whether a healthy diet could compensate for a lack of sleep. Now, researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have discovered that people who eat healthily but sleep for less than six hours a day are still at higher risk of type 2 diabetes. GP Dr Ayan Panja joins Claudia in the studio t