The total number of children, adolescents and adults worldwide living with obesity has surpassed one billion, according to a global analysis published in The Lancet.
These trends, together with the decline in the prevalence of underweight individuals since 1990, make obesity the most common form of malnutrition in most countries worldwide.
The new study was conducted by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), a network of more than 1,500 researchers and practitioners worldwide, including the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College London, who provide rigorous and timely data on important risk factors for non-communicable diseases;
The research, carried out in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), showed that obesity rates among children and adolescents worldwide increased fourfold from 1990 to 2022, while obesity rates among adults have more than doubled.
Martin Mckee, Professor of European Public Health at LSHTM, who contributed to the study, said:
“This analysis is the product of a remarkable international collaboration led by our colleagues at Imperial College.
“The rise in obesity is extremely worrying and threatens to set back so many of the medical advances we have benefited from in recent decades.
“It also points to something very wrong with our food system, with its increasing reliance on the industrial production of energy-dense food.
“This can only be addressed by concerted action that places health at the heart of policy discussions in areas such as agriculture and trade.“
Island nations in the Pacific and Caribbean and countries in the Middle East and North Africa were countries with the highest combined rates of underweight and obesity in 2022.
Across the UK, the obesity rate for adults has increased from 13.8% in 1990 to 28.3% in 2022 for women and 10.7% to 26.9% in 2022 for men. For children and adolescents, the obesity rate increased from 4.7% in 1990 to 10.1% in 2022 for girls and 4.3% to 12.4% in 2022 for boys.
In the US, the obesity rate increased from 21.2% in 1990 to 43.8% in 2022 for adult women and 16.9% to 41.6% in 2022 for men. The obesity rate among US children and adolescents has increased from 11.6% in 1990 to 19.4% in 2022 for girls and 11.5% to 21.7% in 2022 for boys.
Source:
Journal Reference:
NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)., (2024) Global trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 representative population-based studies of 222 million children, adolescents and adults. The Lancet. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02750-2.
