A third of all obese young people will be living in two regions—North Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean—by 2050, a research study published in the Lancet medical journal warned on Tuesday.
Research used data from 204 countries to paint a grim picture of what it described as one of the great health challenges of the century.
More than half the world's overweight or obese adults already live in just eight countries—Egypt, China, India, the United States, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, and Indonesia, the study added.
"The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure," lead author Emmanuela Gakidou, from the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), said in a statement.
The number of overweight or obese people worldwide rose from 929 million in 1990 to 2.6 billion in 2021, the study found.
Global impact
Without a serious change, the researchers estimate that 3.8 billion adults will be overweight or obese in 15 years—or around 60 percent of the global adult population in 2050.
The world's health systems will come under crippling pressure, the researchers warned, with around a quarter of the world's obese expected to be aged over 65 by that time.
They also predicted a 121-percent increase in obesity among children and adolescents around the world.
But it is not too late to act, said study co-author Jessica Kerr from Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia.
Political commitment
"Much stronger political commitment is needed to transform diets within sustainable global food systems," she said.
That commitment was also needed for strategies "that improve people's nutrition, physical activity, and living environments, whether it's too much processed food or not enough parks," Kerr said.
While poor diet and sedentary lifestyles are clearly drivers of the obesity epidemic, "there remains doubt" about the underlying causes for this, said Thorkild Sorensen, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen not involved in the study.
The research is based on figures from the Global Burden of Disease study from the IHME, which brings together thousands of researchers across the world and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
