Childhood obesity rates have surpassed those of undernutrition for the first time, suggesting efforts to combat malnutrition will have to shift gears.
By Grace Wade
12 September 2025
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UNICEF/UN0846048/Florence Gou
For the first time, more children worldwide are living with obesity than undernutrition. The shift indicates childhood malnutrition has entered a new phase, one that the world is ill-equipped to address. While there are proven strategies for reducing hunger, few exist for tackling obesity.
“Despite years of efforts to really prevent obesity, particularly among children and youth, it is clear that we are not doing that great of a job,” says Andrea Richardson at RAND, a non-profit research organisation in California.
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In a new report, Harriet Torlesse at UNICEF in Belgium and her colleagues analysed the nutritional status of children between 5 and 19 years old using data from the Non-communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. This collaborative database spans more than 160 countries and territories, representing more than 90 per cent of children worldwide.
The report revealed that, since 2000, global childhood obesity rates have roughly tripled. About 9.4 per cent of children today live with obesity, compared with 9.2 per cent who are undernourished – the first time that obesity has surpassed undernutrition among children.
The shift is largely driven by rising obesity rates in low- and middle-income countries, where “more than 80 per cent of children living with overweight and obesity in the world are”, says Torlesse. “It is no longer a high-income problem. It is very much a problem globally.”