Gustavo Monnerat, Deputy Editor at The Lancet, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Prevalence tells us where obesity is. Velocity tells us where the next crisis is forming.
A new analysis of 232 million people across 200 countries from The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration calculated year-by-year velocity of obesity from 1980 to 2024, and clustered national trajectories.
Three key findings:
- In high-income Western countries, the rise in childhood obesity began slowing around 1990 and plateaued in most by the mid-2000s. Adults followed a decade later.
- These plateaus settled at radically different levels. Girls in Japan, Denmark and France plateaued at 3-4%. Boys in the USA plateaued at 23%. Adult prevalence ranges from 11% in France to 25-43% in the UK, Canada and USA, all ‘plateaued,’ none equivalent.
- In most low- and middle-income countries, the curve is still accelerating, often past high-income levels. In 2024, obesity prevalence was rising at more than 0.5 percentage points per year in 100 countries for women and 66 for men. The fastest accelerations are in Pacific Island nations, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of South and Southeast Asia.
Which interventions are most realistic in countries where obesity and undernutrition still coexist?”
Title: Obesity rise plateaus in developed nations and accelerates in developing nations
Author: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)
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