2026-09-25 · people
More adults are obese than underweight
A global nutrition transition — not equally distributed by region or income.
More adults now live with obesity than underweight: 16% versus 8% worldwide. WHO counted 890 million adults with obesity in 2022 — a share that has more than doubled since 1990 — and higher-than-optimal BMI caused an estimated 3.7 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases in 2021. It's a global nutrition transition, and it isn't evenly shared.
1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells
Context
The shares describe adults: WHO's 2022 estimates put 43% of people aged 18 and over in the overweight range, including 16% — 890 million adults — living with obesity. Adult obesity has more than doubled since 1990.
The transition is geographically uneven. Adult overweight ranges from 31% in WHO's South-East Asia and Africa regions to 67% in the Americas, and it is rising rapidly in low- and middle-income countries — a problem once tied mainly to high-income ones.
Many of the same countries face a double burden of malnutrition, with undernutrition and obesity coexisting in the same communities and even the same households. If nothing changes, overweight and obesity are projected to cost the world US$3 trillion a year by 2030.
WHO global BMI distribution approximations.
Share and export
Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2026-09-25-obesity-adults