Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

IT Innovation Squeeze: Propositions and a Methodology for Deciding to Continue or Decommission Legacy Systems

Part 6: Theory and MethodsInternational audienceOrganizations have been confronted with fast moving developments in the Information Technology (IT) sector over the past decades. Many new technological paradigms have emerged and left a landscape of legacy in which more and more money is spent on maintaining this landscape at the expense of innovating. Especially where business requirements put time pressure on the evolution of the IT landscape the decision whether to continue and maintain legacy systems or to decommission legacy systems in time has become a huge challenge. We formulate a set of propositions influencing the decision to decommission or continue legacy systems. This set of propositions is derived from literature and interviews with high level managers of organizations. Software characteristics, development methods, dependency of systems, lock-in, system complexity, new technologies and system ownership influence the decision whether to decommission or to maintain a system. We conclude this paper by proposing a methodology that helps organizations in finding the right balance between discontinuing and maintaining legacy systems