More than half of adults worldwide projected to have overweight or obesity by 2050
Key takeaways:
- Global obesity prevalence more than doubled from 1990 to 2021 among both adult men and women.
- The prevalence of overweight and obesity among children rose from 8.8% in 1990 to 18.1% in 2021.
Obesity prevalence increased among both adults and children across all regions of the world from 1990 to 2021, and more than half of adults are expected to have obesity by 2050, according to two reports published in The Lancet.
Two groups of researchers collected data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2021 to estimate global overweight and obesity prevalence from 1990 to 2021 and project obesity prevalence through 2050, with one group of researchers examining trends among adults aged 25 years and older and the second group assessing obesity prevalence among children aged 5 to 14 years and adolescents aged 15 to 24 years. Both groups found large increases in obesity prevalence, with prevalence more than doubling among adults and more than tripling for children and adolescents from 1990 to 2021.
“If unchecked, 3.8 billion adults, over half the global population, will have overweight or obesity by 2050, disproportionately burdening low- and middle-income regions,” Xiaochen Dai, PhD, MPH, lead research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told Healio. “This crisis demands urgent, targeted interventions to avert severe health, economic and societal consequences.”
Researchers in both studies used BMI to identify overweight and obesity. For adults and adolescents aged 18 years and older, overweight was defined as a BMI of 25 kg/m2 or higher and obesity as a BMI of 30 kg/m2 or greater. Overweight and obesity for children and adolescents aged 5 to 17 years were defined based on International Obesity Task Force criteria.
Adult obesity prevalence rising
In 2021, about 45.1% of adults worldwide had overweight or obesity, with more than half of that group living in China, India, the U.S., Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt. There were 133 countries worldwide where the age-standardized prevalence of overweight or obesity for adults was higher than 50%.
From 1990 to 2021, obesity prevalence increased by 104.9% among women and by 155.1% among men. The region with the sharpest increase was North Africa and the Middle East, where obesity prevalence increased from 23.7% in 1990 to 51.1% in 2021 for women, and rose from 9.5% in 1990 to 36.2% in 2021 for men.
If historical trends and patterns continue, 3.8 billion adults will have overweight or obesity by 2050, corresponding to nearly 60% of the global adult population, researchers estimated. The prevalence of overweight and obesity is expected to surpass 80% for women in 60 countries and for men in 54 countries by 2050.
Dai said the projected increase in obesity prevalence is alarming since obesity drives disease such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer and an increase in obesity burden could put strain on health care systems around the world.
“Health care systems — especially in regions like sub-Saharan Africa and Asia — will face dual burdens of infectious diseases and noncommunicable diseases, coupled with aging populations and workforce shortages,” Dai said. “Other studies suggest that direct costs such as surgeries and medications, and indirect costs such as lost productivity, could cripple economies, with obesity-related gross domestic product losses forecasted to reach $4 trillion by 2035.”
Obesity rates increasing for children, teens
The prevalence of overweight and obesity more than doubled for children aged 5 to 14 years, from 8.8% in 1990 to 18.1% in 2021. Similarly, adolescents aged 15 to 24 years had an increase in overweight and obesity prevalence from 9.9% in 1990 to 20.3% in 2021. Obesity prevalence alone more than tripled from 2% in 1990 to 6.8% in 2021 in those aged 5 to 24 years. The sharpest increases in overweight and obesity prevalence occurred in North Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as among high-income nations.
Researchers estimated that roughly one-third of children and adolescents globally will have overweight or obesity by 2050. The percentage of children with obesity is forecast to rise to 15.6% by 2050 while adolescents are expected to have an obesity prevalence of 14.2% by 2050. Obesity prevalence is expected to be highest in countries in North Africa and the Middle East.
By 2040, obesity prevalence is expected to be higher than overweight prevalence in tropical Latin American countries, northern Africa and the Middle East for both children and adolescents. A higher proportion of boys aged 5 to 14 years are expected to have obesity vs. overweight in Central Latin America by 2040, whereas girls aged 5 to 24 years in Australasia countries are expected to have a higher prevalence of obesity than overweight.
Jessica Kerr, PhD, an honorary research fellow in the Centre for Adolescent Health at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia, said there are several areas of the world where interventions are needed to reverse pediatric obesity prevalence trends.
“Our estimates identify children and adolescents in much of Europe and South Asia living with overweight who should be targeted with obesity prevention strategies,” Kerr said in a press release. “We have also identified large populations, particularly adolescent girls, in North America, Australasia, Oceania, North Africa and the Middle East, and Latin America that are expected to tip over to obesity predominance and require urgent, multifaceted intervention and treatment. This is essential to avoid intergenerational transmission of obesity and to prevent a wave of serious health conditions and dire financial and societal costs for future generations.”
How to reverse obesity trends
In a related commentary published in The Lancet, Thorkild I.A. Sørensen, MD, Dr Med Sci, professor emeritus in the department of public health sciences at University of Copenhagen in Denmark, wrote that both studies provide a strong picture of how obesity prevalence will continue to rise globally. He added that the studies revealed how obesity prevalence trends differ between age groups, men and women, as well as by geographical region.
Sørensen said reversing obesity trends globally will be difficult, as health care professionals do not fully understand the drivers of rising obesity prevalence aside from food abundance.
“The prevailing focus is on the obesogenic food environment combined with options for [sedentary lifestyles], but it appears that the [obesity] epidemic began much earlier than the suspected obesogenic transformation of the societies, with first emergence already before World War II in various areas, including my own country, Denmark,” Sørensen told Healio. “Pushing the societies back to before the onset of the epidemic may not make sense and is clearly politically and culturally infeasible. What has been tried so far with regard to lifestyle modifications does not effectively cope with the problems. Rapid escalation of research is what I think is needed.”
Dai said several types of interventions are needed to reverse obesity prevalence trends, including public policy changes, strengthening the health care system to prioritize obesity-related disease and obesity management, addressing social determinants of health, global frameworks led by WHO to combat transnational food industry influence and tailored interventions for subgroups and regions at the highest risk for obesity.
“Without systemic changes, obesity will exacerbate global health inequities and strain societies,” Dai told Healio. “Immediate action is critical to prevent a ‘polycrisis’ of health, economic and social destabilization.”
References:
- GBD 2021 Adolescent BMI Collaborators. Lancet. 2025;doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(25)00397-6.
- More than half of adults and a third of children and adolescents predicted to have overweight or obesity by 2050. https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-more-half-adults-and-third-children-and-adolescents. Published March 4, 2025. Accessed March 4, 2025.
- Sørensen TIA. Lancet. 2025;doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(25)00260-0.
For more information:
Xiaochen Dai, PhD, MPH, can be reached at xdai88@uw.edu.
Thorkild I.A. Sørensen, MD, Dr Med Sci, can be reached at tias@sund.ku.dk.
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