Overweight Adults: What the Map Shows, and the BMI Figure Behind It

More than two in five adults worldwide are overweight by the standard international measure — a figure that has roughly doubled since 1990. The map of it is, in a sense, the mirror image of the hunger map: the world's other nutrition problem. But a single body-mass figure can carry only so much meaning, and reading it well means knowing exactly what it does and doesn't capture.

What the number measures

The figure is the share of a country's adults, aged 18 and over, with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more, according to the World Health Organization.

BMI is a simple calculation: weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared. On the standard scale:

• below 18.5 is underweight;
• 18.5 to 25 is the healthy range;
• 25 and above is overweight;
• 30 and above is classified as obesity — a subset of "overweight."

This map uses the 25-and-over threshold, so it counts everyone overweight or obese combined. Worldwide that comes to about 43 per cent of adults, of whom roughly a sixth of all adults — around 16 per cent — fall in the obesity range.

What BMI can and can't tell you

BMI is the measure the WHO uses for international comparison, and for good reason: it is cheap to gather at scale and, across large populations, it tracks body fat reasonably well. That makes it the practical choice for a world map.

But it is a blunt instrument for any individual. It does not distinguish muscle from fat, and the health risk attached to a given BMI varies by body composition and by population group. So this map is best read as a broad population pattern, according to WHO — a picture of how body weight is distributed across whole countries — not as a verdict on any person, and not as a precise measure of health.

How to read the map

Deeper colour means a larger share of adults at or above the overweight threshold. The pattern, according to WHO:

• highest across the Pacific island nations (several above 80 per cent of adults), parts of the Middle East, and much of the Americas and Europe;
• lowest across much of sub-Saharan Africa and southern and eastern Asia;
• rising in nearly every region, broadly tracking shifts toward energy-dense diets and more sedentary work.

Read each value as the share of adults with a BMI of 25 or more, according to WHO — a population-level figure, not an individual one, and a measure of prevalence, not of its causes. Every value carries its source and year.

This is one face of how the world eats. For the other — where the problem is too little food rather than too much — see the undernourishment map. Together they are the two sides of the global food system: hunger and excess, often rising in different parts of the same world.