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 said on Tuesday.
The research published in the Lancet medical journal 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,” lead author Emmanuela Gakidou, from the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), said in a statement.
The number of overweight or obese people worldwide rose from 929 million in 1990 to 2.6 billion in 2021, the study found.
Without a serious change, the researchers estimate that 3.8bn adults will be overweight or obese in 15 years — or around 60pc of the global adult population in 2050.
The world’s health systems will come under crippling pressure, the researchers warned, with around a quarter of the world’s obese expected to be aged over 65 by that time. They also predicted a 121pc increase in obesity among children and adolescents around the world.
A third of all obese young people will be living in two regions — North Africa and the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean — by 2050, the researchers warned.
But it is not too late to act, said study co-author Jessica Kerr from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia.
“Much stronger political commitment is needed to transform diets within sustainable global food systems,” she said.
