5 hours ago
1
More than half of adults and a third of children and young people worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050, posing an “unparalleled threat” of early death, disease and enormous strain on healthcare systems, a report warns.
Global failures in the response to the growing obesity crisis over the past three decades have led to a staggering increase in the numbers affected, according to the analysis published in the Lancet.
There are now 2.11 billion adults aged 25 or above and 493 million children and young people aged five to 24 who are overweight or obese, the study shows. That is up from 731 million and 198 million respectively in 1990.
Without urgent policy reform and action, the report says, more than half of those aged 25 or above worldwide (3.8 billion) and about a third of all children and young people (746 million) are forecast to be affected by 2050.
The research predicts a particularly alarming rise (121%) in obesity among children and younger people, with the number predicted to be living with obesity predicted to hit 360 million by 2050.
“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” said lead author Prof Emmanuela Gakidou, from the University of Washington.
The numbers affected vary across the globe, the study shows. More than half of the adults classified as overweight or obese live in just eight countries: China (402 million), India (180 million), the US (172 million), Brazil (88 million), Russia (71 million), Mexico (58 million), Indonesia (52 million) and Egypt (41 million).
By 2050, about one in three children and young people living with obesity (130 million) are forecast to be in just two regions – north Africa and the Middle East and Latin America and the Caribbean – with seismic health, economic and societal consequences, the report says.
The researchers warned that children everywhere are gaining weight faster than previous generations and obesity is occurring earlier, increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer occurring at a younger age.
For example, in high-income countries, about 7% of men born in the 1960s were obese by the time they were 25. But this increased to 16% for men born in the 1990s, and is predicted to reach 25% for men born in 2015.
In the UK, the Lancet report predicted that among children aged five to 14, obesity will rise from 12% of girls in 2021 to 18.4% in 2050, and from 9.9% to 15.5% in boys over the same period.
Nearly a quarter of the world’s obese adult population in 2050 are forecast to be aged 65 or above, intensifying the strain on already overburdened healthcare systems and wreaking havoc on services in low-resource countries.
A second study also published on Monday, by the World Obesity Federation, warned in particular of the impact of obesity in poorer countries.
“By far the greatest number of premature deaths attributable to high BMI are in lower- and upper-middle-income countries – indicating poor levels of treatment available,” its authors wrote.
Johanna Ralston, the chief executive of the World Obesity Forum, said: “Obesity has significant health, economic and societal impacts that are likely to be more challenging for lower-resourced countries to address.”
The researchers behind the Lancet study noted some limitations, including that while they used the best available data, predictions were constrained by the quantity and quality of past data. The potential impact of emerging interventions, such as weight-loss drugs, were also not considered.
Writing in a linked comment, Thorkild Sørensen of the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved with the research, said the scale of the obesity crisis was now so significant that there would have to be public health interventions worldwide.
