The 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey report has revealed that the number of women who are overweight is more than twice that of men.

The report specifies that 50.2 percent of women aged 15 to 49 are either overweight or obese, with 20.7% of men within that age bracket also either overweight or obese.

Government Statistician Prof. Samuel Annim revealed that about 22% of women are obese with 28% being overweight.

Breaking down the percentage of men within the same age category, he stated that about 3.9% were obese and 16.8% were overweight.

He added that people in urban centers tend to be weightier than those in rural communities per their survey.

“…We have about 50% of our women aged 15 to 49 years consuming unhealthy foods specifically French fries, the chocolates, all the foods that come with heavy oil base are identified as unhealthy food and these have translated in what we are seeing that about 50% of our women are either obese or overweight,” he stated.

With regards to data on children that are obese, he mentioned that children between 0 to 6 months have a higher percentage of 8.2, adding that the figure reduces to about 2 per cent for children between 40 to 59 months.