Majority of adults worldwide expected to be overweight, obese by 2050: Study

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As the warmer seasons approach, you may already be tempted to get into shape if you happened to let yourself go a little during this seemingly endless winter.

That’s a good thing, though a new study might motivate you to go even harder at improving your health and fitness after it suggested that about 60% of adults and nearly a third of young people around the world will be overweight or obese in 25 years.

“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” lead author Emmanuela Gakidou of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) said in a statement.

The study, published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, noted that the number of overweight or obese people worldwide rose from 929 million in 1990 to 2.6 billion in 2021. Without serious change, researchers predict that figure will grow to 3.8 billion by 2050.

They also predicted a 121% increase in obesity among children and adolescents around the world, with a third of all obese young people living in North Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean by 2050.

According to the study, we are gaining weight faster than previous generations — and obesity is occurring earlier. But study co-author Jessica Kerr, from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia, said it’s not too late to overcome the weighty prognosis.

“Ultimately, as global obesity rates continue to soar, much stronger political commitment is needed to transform diets within sustainable global food systems,” Kerr said, adding there also needs to be strategies that “improve people’s nutrition, physical activity and living environments, whether it’s too much processed food or not enough parks.”

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The research — funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — is based on figures from the IMHE’s Global Burden of Disease study, and is said to be “most comprehensive global analysis to date.”

The definition of overweight or obese is based on body mass index, a simple calculation where you divide your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared (though BMI calculators are widely available).

According to the study, more than half the world’s overweight or obese adults live in just eight countries — China, India, the United States, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt.