Nearly 260 Million Americans Could Be Overweight or Obese by 2050

Four out of five men and women in the United States will be overweight or obese by 2050 if current trends hold, a new study warns.

About 213 million Americans aged 25 and older will be carrying around excess weight within 25 years, along with more than 45 million children and young adults between the ages of 5 and 24, researchers reported Nov. 14 in The Lancet journal.

Worse, obesity is projected to increase at a more rapid rate than overweight, researchers say.

By 2050, two in three adults, one in three teens and one in five children in the United States are expected to be obese, researchers estimate.

All these extra pounds will create a crisis of chronic illness in the nation, said lead study author Emmanuela Gakidou, a professor with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

“Overweight and obesity can trigger serious health conditions — many of which are now occurring at younger ages, including diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, cancer, mental health disorders and even premature death,” Gakidou said in a journal news release. “The soaring health system and economic costs will be equally pervasive, with over 260 million people in the USA, including over half of all children and adolescents, expected to be living with overweight or obesity by 2050.”

For the study, researchers estimated future overweight and obesity rates by combining 134 unique data sources, including major national surveillance survey data, researchers said.

They found that nearly three-quarters of the adult population was overweight or obese in 2021.

Obesity in particular has increased rapidly, doubling between 1990 and 2021 in both men (19% to 42%) and women (23% to 46%), researchers found.

“Our analysis lays bare the decades-long failure to tackle the growing overweight and obesity epidemic in the USA,” Gakidou said.

The highest levels of obesity are in the South, and that trend is expected to continue into the future, researchers said.

For example, two-thirds of men in West Virginia and Kentucky and two-thirds of women across 12 states are expected to be obese by 2050. Especially high rates of obesity are predicted for Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas and Illinois.

Researchers also found that people are becoming obese at earlier ages.

About two in five women born in the 1960s were obese by age 45, but the same proportion had become obese by age 30 for those born in the 1980s, researchers found.

The new analysis found that teenage obesity rates more than doubled in the U.S. between 1990 and 2021, from 9% to 23% in boys and 10% to 29% in girls.

In 2021, an estimated 15 million children and teens and more than 21 million young adults were overweight or obese, results show.

The study predicts that an additional 3.3 million children and teens and another 3.4 million young adults will be overweight or obese by 2050.

The rising tide of adolescent obesity is projected to reach the highest levels among young adult men in Oklahoma (43%), Mississippi (39.8%) and West Virginia (37.7%) in 2050, and affect at least half of young adult women living in Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Alabama, results show.

However, the largest numbers of young obese adults will continue to be in California (1.53 million) and Texas (1.49 million) in 2050.

Cutting-edge weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound might help some control their weight, but to head off this trend policy makers will need to focus on ways to promote healthy weight beyond telling people to eat less and exercise, researchers said.

“Given the predicted surge in overweight and obesity, demand for anti-obesity medication will definitely increase, but it is not a silver bullet,” said co-author Marie Ng, an affiliate associate professor with IHME.

“Above all, reversing the U.S. obesity epidemic will rely on the government supporting programs that increase levels of physical activity, such as investing in safe and walkable neighborhoods, guaranteeing the availability of healthy food to children and adolescents, regulating the food and marketing industries and achieving environmentally sustainable food systems,” Gakidou said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about obesity.

SOURCE: The Lancet, news release, Nov. 14, 2024