Vietnam is experiencing a 38% increase in overweight and obesity rates, placing it among the Southeast Asian nations with the fastest-growing rates.

"Vietnam is facing a triple burden of nutrition, including stunting, overweight, obesity and micronutrient deficiency,” Rana Flowers, UNICEF and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN representative in Vietnam, told a conference held in Hanoi on April 15 for the release of the main findings of the National General Nutrition Survey for 2019 – 2020.

One in every three Vietnamese children under the age of five is either malnourished or overweight as a result of poor diets and a food system that is failing them, heard a ceremony in Hanoi on October 16 to release the UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2019 report.

Indonesia’s East Java province has put 50 overweight police on a special physical training programme to lose weight and better serve their job.

The municipal administration of HCM City aims to keep the rate of overweight and obese children under five years at less than 12 percent by 2020.

Vietnam and Bangladesh are the two countries with the lowest adult obesity rate at 1 percent, according to the latest global study released on June 12.

The proportion of malnourished children is reducing remarkably but the ratio of childhood obesity is on the rise, according to the Ministry of Health’s Department of Preventive Medicine.