Unprecedented obesity rates are a time bomb of future burdens on health care systems but global efforts to reverse the epidemic are failing, according to a major new series in the Lancet, one of the worlds top medical journals.

An estimated 2.1 billion people are now overweight and even modest targets set by the World Health Organization to maintain zero growth in obesity rates between 2010 and 2025 are at risk of being missed.

Turning this tide will require strong government policies, as well as engagement from the food industry, civic society and health practitioners, according to the Lancet series, published Wednesday.

But the world also needs to shift how it currently thinks about obesity, said Christina Roberto, who led one of the six studies in the series.

Obesity, she said, is a multi-faceted health problem caused by everything from genes and globalization to predatory food marketing aimed at children that demands an equally complex solution.

An individual is responsible for his or her food choices but its often true that the environment shapes what we eat, said Roberto, an assistant professor with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The discourse has traditionally been focused on oh, its either the individual or its the food environment. What were trying to say is both are true.

The Lancet series explores a wide-ranging approach to tackling obesity, which can lead to chronic ailments like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. As of 2010, a high body mass index (which calculates body fat based on height and weight) accounted for roughly 2.8 million deaths per year.

While everybody is vulnerable to eating too much unhealthy food, modern environments have been designed to exploit that biological vulnerability, Roberto said.

The risk is particularly high for children, who are heavily targeted by the food industry, according to Dr. Tim Lobstein with the World Obesity Federation, another study author.

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Obesity is a health care time bomb, warn Lancet authors