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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #128: The global incidence of child obesity vs. severely underweight

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Since 1975, there has been a sharp reduction in the global incidence of underweight children. But there has also been a dramatic rise in childhood obesity. The latter development prompted the authors of a study published in the Lancet in 2017 to project that by 2022, the global incidence of children and adolescents who are obese would, for the first time in history, exceed the incidence of being moderately or severely underweight. That projection seems certain to come true (see image below), given that the measures implemented to contain the spread of Covid-19 “may have also increased the risk of obesity,” as the World Obesity Federation has pointed out. And childhood obesity typically begets adult obesity. In the United States, which has the world’s highest child obesity rate, more than half of children who become obese between the ages of 6 and 11 later become obese as adults, according to Georgetown University. Among obese children ages 12-17, more than 70 percent become obese adults.