Global obesity rates drastically rise from 1990 to 2022

Key takeaways:

• Rates of obesity tripled in men and quadrupled in girls, researchers found.
• The findings show an urgent need for obesity prevention and management.

The global rates of obesity substantially rose among both youth and adults over the last 3 decades, whereas over 1 billion people lived with obesity in 2022, according to researchers.

“It is very concerning that the epidemic of obesity that was evident among adults in much of the world in 1990 is now mirrored in school-aged children and adolescents,” Majid Ezzati, PhD, a professor of global environmental health at Imperial College London, said in a press release. “At the same time, hundreds of millions are still affected by undernutrition, particularly in some of the poorest parts of the world. To successfully tackle both forms of malnutrition, it is vital we significantly improve the availability and affordability of healthy, nutritious foods.”

In the study, researchers from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration evaluated 3,663 population-based studies composed of 222 million children, adolescents and adults globally.

They used a Bayesian hierarchical model to determine obesity and underweight trends, based on BMI, between 1990 to 2022 among adults aged 20 years and older and youth aged 5 to 19 years.

Ezzati and colleagues found that the rates of global obesity rose from:

• 4.8% to 14% among men;
• 8.8% to 18.5% among women;
• 1.7% to 6.9% among girls; and from
• 2.1% to 9.3% among boys.

In the United States, obesity rates during the study period increased from:

• 4.7% to 10.1% among boys;
• 4.3% to 12.4% among girls;
• 21.2% to 43.8% among women; and from
• 16.9% to 41.6% among men.

The prevalence of obesity in the U.S. ranked 10th highest in the world for men in 2022, 22nd highest for girls, 26th highest for boys and 36th highest for women.

The global proportion of girls and boys who were underweight, meanwhile, fell from 10.3% to 8.2% and from 16.7% to 10.8%, respectively.

There were an estimated 880 million adults — 504 million women and 374 million men — with obesity in 2022, up from 195 million in 1990.

When youth and adults were combined, there were over 1 billion people with obesity in 2022.

The researchers pointed out that the findings show an “urgent need for obesity prevention, supporting weight loss and reducing disease risk in those with obesity.”

“Prevention and management are especially important because the age of onset of obesity has decreased, which increases the duration of exposure,” they wrote.

The study had some limitations. Some countries had fewer data than others, Ezzati and colleagues noted, while BMI “is an imperfect measure of the extent and distribution of body fat.”

Still, “this new study highlights the importance of preventing and managing obesity from early life to adulthood, through diet, physical activity, and adequate care, as needed,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, said in the release. “Getting back on track to meet the global targets for curbing obesity will take the work of governments and communities, supported by evidence-based policies from WHO and national public health agencies.”

References:

• The Lancet: More than one billion people in the world are now living with obesity, global analysis suggests. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1035924. Published Feb. 29, 2024. Accessed Feb. 29, 2024.
• Phelps N, et al. Lancet. 2024;doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02750-2.