Nearly 60 per cent of all adults and a third of all children in the world will be overweight or obese by 2050 unless governments take action, a large new study says.
The research, published in The Lancet medical journal on March 4, World Obesity Day, used data from 204 countries to paint a grim picture of what it described as one of the great health challenges of the century.
“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” says lead author Emmanuela Gakidou, from the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
The number of overweight or obese people worldwide rose from 929 million in 1990 to 2.6 billion in 2021, the study found.
Much stronger political commitment is needed to transform diets within sustainable global food systems
Without a serious change, the researchers estimate that 3.8 billion adults will be overweight or obese in 15 years – or around 60 per cent of the global adult population in 2050.