More than 220m children will be obese by 2040 without drastic action, report warns | Obesity
Without drastic measures, more than 220 million children could suffer from obesity by 2040, an international report warns.
Worldwide, in 2025, approximately 180 million children were obese. But new figures from the World Obesity Federation suggest that by 2040, around 227 million people aged 5 to 19 will be obese and more than half a billion will be overweight.
According to the federation’s 2026 Global Obesity Atlas, this would mean at least 120 million school-aged children would show early signs of chronic diseases caused by their high body mass index (BMI).
A person is considered obese if their BMI is greater than or equal to 30, and overweight if their BMI is greater than 25.
Johanna Ralston, chief executive of the World Obesity Federation, said the rise in childhood obesity worldwide showed a failure to take the disease seriously. “It is not fair to condemn a generation to obesity and the chronic and life-threatening noncommunicable diseases that often accompany it,” she said.
According to the report, 27 million American youth ages 5 to 19 have a high BMI, trailing only China (62 million) and India (41 million). This equates to two in five American children being obese or overweight.
In the UK, around 3.8 million children have a record high BMI – making it one of the worst performing countries in Europe, with around twice as many overweight and obese children as in France and Italy.
The report estimates that by 2040, 370,000 children aged 5 to 19 in the UK are expected to show signs of cardiovascular disease, and 271,000 would show signs of hypertension.
The report identifies significant regional inequalities. The 10 countries in which more than half of school-age children are overweight or suffer from obesity are all in the Western Pacific region or the Americas, while the fastest growing obesity rates are mainly in low- and middle-income countries.
The report calls for increased efforts to create healthy environments, including taxing sugar, limiting junk food advertising and adopting policies to help children lead more active lives.
Global experts hailed the results. Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, regional advisor for nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the World Health Organization in Europe, said childhood obesity was an “environmental failure”.
He called for marketing restrictions or front-of-pack labeling to be mandatory rather than voluntary. “The majority of governments – including many European countries – allow the food industry to target children without restriction,” he said. “What we need is the political will to act and resist industry interference. »
Katharine Jenner, executive director of the Obesity Health Alliance, said childhood obesity was “not inevitable”. “The predicted increase in early signs of heart disease and hypertension should be a wake-up call about the long-term consequences of continued government inaction,” she said.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are restricting junk food advertising on TV before 9pm and at any time online – a move expected to remove up to 7.2 billion calories a year from children’s diets – while giving local authorities stronger powers to prevent fast food shops from opening near schools. »
