More than a billion people in the world live with obesity

The study, published this Friday in The Lancet, shows that more than one billion people worldwide live with obesity, according to the NCD Risk Factors Collaboration and the World Health Organization. The analysis shows that obesity rates among children and adolescents have quadrupled since 1990, while In adults, the rate doubled for women and nearly tripled for men.

Investigation

Analyzing data from more than 220 million people from more than 190 countries, it uses body mass index (BMI) to understand global trends in obesity and underweight between 1990 and 2022. Obesity has become the most common form of malnutrition, according to the analysis. in most countries, exceeding the prevalence of underweight people since 1990.

Professor Majid Ezzati, lead author of the study and a research fellow at Imperial College London, expressed concern about the rapid increase in obesity among children and adolescents, reflecting a trend that was evident in adults in the 1990s. malnutrition and improve the availability and accessibility of healthy and nutritious food.

Between 1990 and 2022, global obesity rates among girls and boys quadrupled, rising from 1.7% to 6.9% among girls and from 2.1% to 9.3% among boys. Rates of underweight decreased in both categories: from 10.3% to 8.2% for girls and from 16.7% to 10.8% for boys. This change has led to a transition in which more people are obese than underweight in most countries.

In case of adults

Between 1990 and 2022, obesity rates doubled in women (8.8% to 18.5%) and nearly tripled in men (4.8% to 14.0%). Despite this increase, obesity rates in 2024 remain lower than in 2015. with obesity in 2022, more than four and a half times the 195 million recorded in 1990.

The study also revealed alarming rates of obesity in some countries. In the UK, obesity rates have increased from 13.8% in 1990 to 28.3% in 2022 for women and from 10.7% to 26.9% for men. In the United States, obesity rates increased from 21.2% in 1990 to 43.8% in 2022 for women and from 16.9% to 41.6% in 2022 for men.