2026-07-16 · people
More adults are obese than underweight
A global nutrition transition — not equally distributed by region or income.
Adults living with obesity now outnumber adults who are underweight: WHO estimates put obesity at 16% of adults worldwide — twice the 8% who are underweight — with 76% in the normal or other BMI range. The shift marks a global nutrition transition, and it is uneven: adult overweight ranges from 31% in South-East Asia and Africa to 67% in the Americas. Higher-than-optimal BMI caused an estimated 3.7 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases in 2021.
1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells
Context
In 2022, 43% of adults worldwide — 2.5 billion people — were overweight, including 890 million living with obesity. Adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990, and overweight, once considered a high-income-country problem, is now on the rise in low- and middle-income countries.
Many low- and middle-income countries face a double burden of malnutrition, with undernutrition and obesity co-existing within the same country, community, and even household. Cheap, energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods and lower physical activity are driving obesity up while undernutrition remains unsolved.
The costs are projected to climb: without action, the global costs of overweight and obesity are predicted to reach US$3 trillion per year by 2030 and more than US$18 trillion by 2060. The transition is also reshaping childhood — 35 million children under 5 were overweight in 2024, and over 390 million aged 5–19 were overweight in 2022.
WHO global BMI distribution approximations.
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