2026-08-24 · people
More adults are obese than underweight
A global nutrition transition — not equally distributed by region or income.
More adults live with obesity than underweight: 16% of the world's adults versus 8% underweight, on a planet of 8.2 billion. WHO calls obesity a global public health crisis — adult prevalence has more than doubled since 1990, and the rise is globalizing fast into low- and middle-income countries. The remaining 76% of adults sit in the normal or other BMI band.
1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells
Context
In 2022, 2.5 billion adults aged 18 and over were overweight — 43% of all adults, up from 25% in 1990 — including 890 million living with obesity. Overweight prevalence ranged widely, from 31% of adults in the WHO South-East Asia and Africa regions to 67% in the Region of the Americas.
The stakes are heavy: higher-than-optimal BMI caused an estimated 3.7 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases in 2021, and the global cost of overweight and obesity is projected to reach US$3 trillion a year by 2030. WHO classifies obesity as a chronic, relapsing disease shaped by environments, not just individual choices.
Many low- and middle-income countries now face a double burden of malnutrition, with undernutrition and obesity co-existing in the same communities — sometimes the same households. Cheap, energy-dense foods are pushing weight up while undernutrition remains unsolved.
WHO global BMI distribution approximations.
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Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-08-24-obesity-adults