London, Great Britain (The Adobo Chronicles) –  Almost a third of the world is now fat, and no country has been able to curb obesity rates in the last three decades, according to a new global analysis.

Researchers found more than 2 billion people – or 3o percent of the world’s population – are now overweight or obese. “It’s pretty grim,” said Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study. He and colleagues reviewed more than 1,700 studies covering 188 countries from 1980 to 2013. “When we realized that not a single country has had a significant decline in obesity, that tells you how hard a challenge this is.”

The good news is that 7o percent of the world’s population is still thin. Murray said there was a strong link between income and obesity; as people get richer, their waistlines also tend to start bulging.

The study then concluded that in order to maintain the “thin-ness” of the world’s population, governments and private employers need to keep incomes low.

The new report was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet.

Good news for the world’s low-income population!