More than half of the world’s population will be overweight or obese by 2035 unless governments take decisive action to curb the growing epidemic of excess weight, a report has warned.
About 2.6 billion people globally – 38% of the world population – are already overweight or obese. But on current trends that is expected to rise to more than 4 billion people (51%) in 12 years’ time, according to research by the World Obesity Federation.
Without widespread use of tactics such as taxes and limits on the promotion of unhealthy food, the number of people who are clinically obese will increase from one in seven today to one in four by 2035. If that happens, almost 2 billion people worldwide would be living with obesity.
Those with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 are judged to be overweight, while people whose BMI is at least 30 are deemed to be obese. Evidence shows that obesity increases someone’s risk of cancer, heart disease and other diseases.
Obesity among children and young people is on course to increase faster than among adults. By 2035 it is expected to be at least double the rate seen in 2020, according to the federation’s latest annual World Obesity Atlas report.
It is expected to rise by 100% among boys under 18, leaving 208 million affected, but go up even more sharply – by 125% – among girls the same age, which would see 175 million of them affected.
Prof Louise Baur, the federation’s president, said the stark findings were “a clear warning that by failing to address obesity today, we risk serious repercussions in the future.
“It is particularly worrying to see obesity rates rising fastest among children and adolescents.”
Countries need to take “ambitious and coordinated action” as part of a “robust international response” to tackle the growing health and economic crisis that obesity involves, the federation believes.
“Governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation,” Baur added.
The federation is an alliance of health, scientific, research and campaign groups, and works closely on obesity with various global agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO). Its members in the UK include the Association for the Study of Obesity.
It wants governments to use tax systems; restrictions on the marketing of foods that are high in fat, salt or sugar; front-of-pack labels; and provision of healthy food in schools to address rising obesity.
The federation’s report also highlights that many of the world’s poorest countries are facing the sharpest increases in obesity yet are the least well prepared to confront the disease.
Nine of the 10 countries set to experience the biggest rises in coming years are low- or middle-income nations in Africa and Asia.
Niger, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, Nigeria and Central African Republic are the least prepared countries to deal with rising obesity, the federation says. Rachel Jackson Leach, the federation’s director of science, warned that without firm action, low- and middle-income countries that are least able to tackle obesity would suffer major consequences.
“The greatest increases will be seen in low- and middle-income countries where scarce resources and lack of preparedness will create a perfect storm that will negatively impact people living with obesity the most,” she said.
It ranks rich European nations as the 10 best prepared of 183 countries studied. That list is headed by Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Sweden. The UK was judged seventh on that measure.
The global cost of obesity is also due to rocket, from $1.96tr in 2019 to $4.32tr by 2035, which would be the equivalent of 3% of global GDP – a sum comparable to the economic damage wrought by Covid-19 – the federation estimates.
Its report says that rising obesity globally is being driven by factors such as the climate emergency, Covid restrictions and chemical pollutants, as well as the composition and promotion of unhealthy foods and the behaviour of the food industry.
