The escalating obesity crisis in the UK appears to be reaching a plateau, with researchers suggesting that the launch of new weight loss medications could further drive down rates.
A comprehensive global analysis, led by a team at Imperial College London, indicates that the rapid increase in obesity observed over recent decades is now decelerating or stabilising.
For girls in the UK, this plateau was noted around the year 2000, with boys following suit before 2005.
While obesity rates among adult men and women are still climbing, their ascent is significantly slowing.
The study, published in the journal Nature, examined over four decades of health data from 200 countries and territories, spanning from 1980 to 2024.
It revealed that the slowdown in high-income nations initially manifested in school-aged children before extending to adults.
Some countries, including France, Italy, and Portugal, are even witnessing a reversal in their obesity trends.
This shift happened at some point in the early-mid-2000s for women and shortly afterwards for men, lead researcher Professor Majid Ezzati told the Press Association.
However, when it comes to the percentage of people with obesity, he said there is still a high proportion of people in the UK who are obese.
In 1980 in the UK, 1.5% of boys were obese, rising to 12.4% in 2024.
For girls, the rise was from 1.6% to 10.1% over the same period.
Meanwhile in men, some 5.7% were obese in 1980, rising to 26.7% in 2024.
Among women, the jump was from 8.5% in 1980 to 29.6% in 2024, Prof Ezzati said.
He added that the UK remains mostly in the top 10 countries among high-income western nations for obesity rates.
While the impact of weight loss injections such as Wegovy and Mounjaro are not reflected in the data yet, experts believe they could play an important role in future trends.
Prof Ezzati said the focus should be on making these drugs more affordable to all who need them around the world.
He told a briefing: “They have been a game-changer at a clinical level, for individual patients, and we are learning more and more about them in trials.
“They have all kinds of benefits.”
He said the drugs represented “another tool to be used that will have large benefits for individuals and perhaps at the population level”.
He said the current study did not reflect their use, owing to the time period studied, “but going forward, they could be a game-changer, or they could end up having a small impact if we start seeing all kinds of side-effects”.
On the differences between countries when it comes to obesity rates, Prof Ezzati said there were many factors at play, including economics, sources of food and the culture around food.
He added: “It may be about how food is sourced and distributed. So is it about things that tend to be more packaged and processed?
“Or is it about things that are more fresh? And that’s economics, that’s policy, that’s culture.”
He said each country is different when it comes to food, however “we have made it easy to eat unhealthy things”.
He added: “I think the common denominator is, ‘How do we make it easy to eat healthy food?’.”
The UK data included the National Child Measurement Programme data for England plus the Health Survey for England, funded by the Department of Health.
“When we take it all together, the results that we see… it’s been just about flat,” Prof Ezzati said.
“There have been fluctuations… but when you take the connectivity of it, it has been completely flattened.”
However, he said that, compared with a lot of western European countries, “even though the UK has plateauing or slowing down obesity, it’s still at a much higher prevalence level than a lot of European countries”.
And on the wider study, he said it painted a “more optimistic picture that progress is being made” and works to challenge “the widely accepted view that we’re experiencing a global epidemic of obesity”.
The study found that obesity prevalence continues to rise in many low and middle‑income countries, particularly in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Pacific and Caribbean islands.
In all, the team analysed weight and height measurements from more than 232 million people aged five and over (70 million people aged five to 19, and 162 million aged 20 or older).
More than 1,900 researchers contributed to the study.
Dr Marie Spreckley, research programme manager at the University of Cambridge, said: “For the UK, the findings suggest that obesity prevalence may be stabilising, but at a relatively high level compared with many other high-income countries.
“This should not be interpreted as evidence that the problem has been solved.
“A plateau at high prevalence still represents a substantial burden for individuals, healthcare systems and society, and reinforces the continued need for effective prevention, treatment and long-term support strategies.”
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