Without drastic action more than 220 million children could have obesity by 2040, an international report has warned.
Globally, in 2025 about 180 million children were obese. But new figures from the World Obesity Federation suggest that by 2040, about 227 million of all 5- to 19-year-olds will have obesity and more than half a billion will be overweight.
According to the federation’s 2026 world obesity atlas, that would mean that at least 120 million school-age children would have early signs of chronic disease caused by their high body mass index (BMI).
Someone is classed as obese if their BMI is 30 or above, and overweight if it is above 25.
Johanna Ralston, the World Obesity Federation’s chief executive, said the increase in childhood obesity worldwide showed a failure to take the disease seriously. “It is not right to condemn a generation to obesity and the chronic and potentially fatal non-communicable diseases that often go with it,” she said.
According to the report, 27 million 5- to 19-year-olds in the US have high BMI, behind only China (62 million) and India (41 million). That equates to two in five US children having obesity or being overweight.
In the UK, about 3.8 million children have high BMI, a record – making it among the worst performing countries in Europe, with around twice the numbers of overweight and obese children as in France and Italy.
The report estimates that by 2040, 370,000 children aged between 5 to 19 in the UK are expected to have signs of cardiovascular disease, and 271,000 are estimated to show signs of hypertension.
The report identifies significant regional inequalities. The 10 countries where more than half of school-age children are overweight or have obesity are all in the western Pacific region or the Americas, while the fastest growth in obesity rates is predominantly in low- and middle-income countries.
The report calls for greater efforts to create healthy environments, including sugar taxes, limits on junk food advertising and policies to help children lead more active lives.
Global experts welcomed the findings. Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, regional adviser for nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the World Health Organization, Europe, said that childhood obesity was a “failure of environments”.
He called for mandatory, rather than voluntary, marketing restrictions or front-of-pack labelling. “The majority of governments – including many in Europe – are allowing the food industry to target children without restriction,” he said. “What we need is the political will to take action and stand up to industry interference.”
Katharine Jenner, executive director of the Obesity Health Alliance, said childhood obesity was “not inevitable”. “The projected rise 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 television before 9pm and at all times online – a move expected to remove up to 7.2bn calories per year from children’s diets – while giving local authorities stronger powers to stop fast food shops opening near schools.”
