Third of children set to be overweight or obese by 2050, study warns

The research, led by Australia’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and published in The Lancet, paints a stark picture: by 2050, 385 million children will be overweight, while 360 million will be obese. That’s a total of 745 million young people aged 5-24 affected by excess weight in just 25 years.

In the UK, obesity already costs the NHS around £6.5 billion annually and is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer. With rising childhood obesity, these costs are expected to escalate even further.

A generation let down

The global obesity rate for children and adolescents (aged 5-24) has already tripled between 1990 and 2021 — soaring by 244 percent to 174 million in just three decades. Current prevention efforts, researchers say, have largely failed an entire generation of young people.

Dr Jessica Kerr from MCRI said if immediate five-year action plans were not developed, the future was bleak for our youth. 

“Children and adolescents remain a vulnerable population within the obesity epidemic.”

As of 2021, nearly half a billion children and adolescents (493 million) were already overweight or obese. Worryingly, by 2050, boys aged 5-14 are expected to be more likely to be obese than overweight, signalling a dramatic shift.

Global hotspots and vulnerable populations

The study, released to mark World Obesity Day, analysed data from 204 countries using the 2021 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study. The United Arab Emirates, Cook Islands, Nauru and Tonga are forecast to have the highest prevalence while China, Egypt, India and the US will have the greatest number of children and adolescents with obesity by 2050.

Australia is also facing a particular crisis, with some of the fastest-growing childhood obesity rates in the world. By 2050, 2.2 million Australian children and adolescents are projected to be obese, with another 1.6 million overweight. Alarmingly, girls in Australia are already more likely to be obese than overweight — a trend not yet mirrored globally.

Dr Kerr highlighted that older adolescent girls, aged 15-24, should be a priority focus. “Adolescent girls who are obese are a main focus if we are to avoid intergenerational transmission of obesity, chronic conditions and the dire financial and societal costs across future generations,” she said.

Policy change or public health emergency?

The researchers are clear: without urgent policy reform, obesity rates will spiral, particularly in North Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, regions that face rapidly rising populations and limited healthcare resources.

Dr Kerr stressed that many countries historically focused on tackling undernutrition and stunting in children but now need to pivot rapidly to prevent a new crisis. “An immediate imperative should be creating national surveillance surveys of obesity in children and adolescents in every country,” she said.

MCRI’s Professor Susan Sawyer also called for bold government action to tackle the environmental and commercial factors driving childhood obesity. “While people and families can work to balance their physical activity, diet and sleep, everything in our environments works to counteract these efforts,” she said.

She urged governments to invest in comprehensive strategies, including sugar tax policies, banning junk food ads aimed at children and ensuring healthy meals in schools. “Given this huge global shift in children’s and adolescents’ weight, we can no longer keep blaming people for their choices,” she said.

She added, “We require governments to step up by addressing regulatory interventions including taxing sugar sweetened beverages, banning junk food advertising aimed at children and young people and funding healthy meals in primary and secondary schools. We also need to consider the benefits of wider policies such as overhauling urban planning to encourage active lifestyles.”