Facts about overweight and obesity
Some recent WHO global estimates follow.
In 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults aged 18 years and older were overweight. Of these over 600 million adults were obese.
Overall, about 13% of the world’s adult population (11% of men and 15% of women) were obese in 2014.
In 2014, 39% of adults aged 18 years and over (38% of men and 40% of women) were overweight.
The worldwide prevalence of obesity more than doubled between 1980 and 2014.
In 2014, an estimated 41 million children under the age of 5 years were overweight or obese. Once considered a high-income country problem, overweight and obesity are now on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings. In Africa, the number of children who are overweight or obese has nearly doubled from 5.4 million in 1990 to 10.6 million in 2014. Nearly half of the children under 5 who were overweight or obese in 2014 lived in Asia.
Overweight and obesity are linked to more deaths worldwide than underweight. Globally there are more people who are obese than underweight – this occurs in every region except parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.