More than 1B people live with obesity globally, study shows. What about Canada? 

More than one billion people worldwide are grappling with obesity, with children particularly experiencing alarming increases in numbers, a new study shows.

More than one billion people worldwide are grappling with obesity, with children in particular experiencing alarming increases in numbers, a new study shows.

A global analysis published in the Lancet on Thursday found that obesity rates in children and adolescents across the world surged fourfold from 1990 to 2022. During this period, obesity rates more than doubled in adult women and nearly tripled in adult men.

“It is very concerning that the epidemic of obesity that was evident among adults in much of the world in 1990 is now mirrored in school-aged children and adolescents,” said Majid Ezzati, senior author and professor at Imperial College London’s School of Public Health.

“At the same time, hundreds of millions are still affected by undernutrition, particularly in some of the poorest parts of the world. To successfully tackle both forms of malnutrition it is vital we significantly improve the availability and affordability of healthy, nutritious foods,” he said in a Thursday press release.

The new study was conducted by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). To find the data, researchers looked at weight and height measurements from over 220 million people aged five years or older, representing more than 190 countries. The goal of the study was to understand how obesity and being underweight have changed worldwide from 1990 to 2022.

In total, 159 million children and adolescents (65 million girls and 94 million boys) were living with obesity in 2022. Comparatively, 31 million children and adolescents in 1990 were living with obesity.

In adults, the study found that an estimated nearly 880 million adults were living with obesity in 2022 (504 million women and 374 million men), four and a half times the 195 million recorded in 1990 (128 million women and 67 million men).

The study also found that over the same period, rates of underweight fell among children, adolescents and adults, leading to obesity becoming the most common form of malnutrition in many countries.