60% of Adults, 31% of Children Projected to Have Overweight or Obesity by 2050

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A pair of global analyses reveal that over half of adults (3.8 billion) and one-third of children and adolescents (746 million) worldwide will have overweight or obesity by 2050 if current trends continue. Obesity rates have more than doubled since 1990, with 2.11 billion adults and 493 million children and adolescents affected as of 2021. These reports are especially timely as World Obesity Day (March 4) highlights the urgent need for action to combat the growing obesity crisis.

The burden is not evenly distributed across the globe — more than half of the world’s adults with overweight or obesity live in just eight countries: China, India, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Egypt and Turkey. In the United States, obesity rates are already among the highest of high-income nations, affecting 42% of men and 46% of women.

“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” said lead investigator Emmanuela Gakidou, Ph.D., from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington.

Investigators estimated the prevalence of overweight and obesity using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study, which collected information from 204 countries and territories worldwide.

A particularly alarming trend is the rapid rise in childhood obesity, which is projected to outpace overweight among children and adolescents by 2050, with 360 million young people affected, representing a 121% rise in obesity around the world. These numbers are predicted to significantly increase immediately — from now through 2030. By 2050, 16.5% of boys aged 5 to 14 years are expected to have obesity and 12.9% are expected to have overweight.

“But if we act now, preventing a complete transition to global obesity for children and adolescents is still possible,” said co-lead investigator Jessica Kerr, Ph.D., from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia.

In Nigeria, the number of adults with obesity is expected to more than triple by 2050 (from 36.6 million to 141 million), marking a significant shift in disease burden for the region. The number of people living in sub-Saharan Africa is forecasted to increase 250% by 2050.

The report warns that obesity will have profound implications for health care systems, as nearly a quarter of adults with obesity by 2050 will be over 65, further straining medical resources. This could have particularly disastrous effects on low-resource countries.

Experts emphasize the need for urgent policy action to address these trends and curb the growing obesity epidemic before it worsens. The investigators encourage five-year action plans to be put in place immediately along with new goals and targets for the post-2030 Sustainable Development Goals era. These efforts should focus on each country’s unique sociodemographic, economic, environmental and commercial concerns.

“Preventing obesity must be at the forefront of policies in low- and middle-income countries,” said Kerr. “Policy action in these regions must balance the challenges of overnutrition with undernutrition and stunting, with interventions ranging from support for nutritional diets and regulating ultraprocessed foods to promoting maternal and child health programs that encourage pregnant women to follow a healthy diet and breastfeed.”

Investigators mentioned limitations of the study, including the possibility of systemic biases from self-reported data. Additionally, they based their definitions of obesity and overweight on body mass index (BMI), which does not consider body structure variations across ethnic groups and subpopulations. Lastly, they did not account for the impact of interventions, including anti-obesity medications, which could change the long-term forecasting trends.

“This is no time for business as usual,” Kerr concluded. “Many countries only have a short window of opportunity to stop much greater numbers shifting from overweight to obesity.”