The trend lines for obesity — already bad as it is — are unfortunately not getting any better:
Without urgent policy reform and action, over half the world's adult population (3.8 billion) and a third of all children and adolescents (746 million) are forecast to be living with overweight or obesity by 2050 — posing an unparalleled threat of premature disease and death at local, national, and global levels, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study BMI Collaborators, published in The Lancet.
The huge numbers have been driven by "massive global failures in the response to the growing obesity crisis" worldwide. The number of overweight and obese adults and children has risen "from 731 million and 198 million respectively in 1990, to 2.11 billion and 493 million in 2021."
As bad as the numbers are going to get, they're already awful:
Almost half of the global adult population (1 billion males and 1.11 billion females aged 25 or older) are estimated to be living with overweight or obesity in 2021. The prevalence of obesity more than doubled worldwide between 1990 and 2021 in both adult men (from 5.8% to 14.8%) and women (10.2% to 20.8%).
The increase, meanwhile, is coming in no small part from an unlikely place: While the largest number of obese adults are projected to hail from the U.S., India and China, "the number in sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to rise by over 250% to 522 million, driven by population growth."
Here's some charts showing some of the projected regional increases:
World governments are, to put it mildly, not addressing this crisis properly:
Current strategies have failed to address the obesity crisis. Despite long-standing awareness of the threat to disease and premature death, no country has made substantial progress in reducing adult obesity.
Looks like we're gonna have to Make the World Healthy Again!
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