More than half of adults are expected to be overweight or obese by 2050

In case you need more motivation to shed that winter weight, a startling new study predicts that about 60% of adults and nearly a third of young people worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050.

“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” said Emmanuela Gakidou, lead author of the study published Monday in the Lancet.

Gakidou’s team reports that the number of overweight and obese adults 25 and older rose from 731 million to 2.11 billion from 1990 to 2021. It’s expected to grow to 3.8 billion by 2050.

Overweight and obese people under 25 increased from 198 million to 493 million between 1990 and 2021. That number is forecasted to reach 746 million by 2050.

A spokesperson for the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which led the study, blamed the growing crisis on unequal access to healthy foods, aggressive marketing of junk foods, a lack of safe spaces for physical activity, genetic predisposition to obesity and policy failures.

“Our study does not focus on identifying the underlying causes of the increasing obesity prevalence,” IHME told The Post. “Instead, we aim to present trends and forecasts of the obesity epidemic worldwide.” 

The study noted that we’re gaining weight faster than previous generations — and obesity is occurring earlier.

In high-income countries, about 7% of men born in the 1960s were obese by age 25. Now it’s around 16% of men born in the ’90s and a predicted 25% of males born in 2015.

The US has the highest rates of obesity among high-income countries, with about 42% of men and 46% of women considered obese in 2021.

There were 172 million obese and overweight adults over 25 in the US in 2021 — 214 million are expected by 2050.

IHME said US “priority populations,” who require immediate intervention and treatment because of their obesity prevalence, include residents of Southern states, females between 15 and 24 in states like Mississippi, males of the same age in states such as Oklahoma and Texas, adult men in North Dakota and adult women in Mississippi.

Meanwhile, more than half of the world’s obese and overweight adults live in just eight countries — China, India, the US, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Egypt.

“Ultimately, as global obesity rates continue to soar, much stronger political commitment is needed to transform diets within sustainable global food systems and to support comprehensive strategies that improve people’s nutrition, physical activity and living environments, whether it’s too much processed food or not enough parks,” said co-lead study author Jessica Kerr from Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia.

Obesity increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases and several cancers.

The research — funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and deemed the “most comprehensive global analysis to date” — has limitations.

The definition of overweight or obese is based on body mass index, which has been criticized as a poor metric of health. IHME said BMI still “remains a widely used and practical measure.”

The study also doesn’t consider the impact of Ozempic and similar weight loss jabs, which could greatly affect the obesity epidemic.

Thorkild I.A. Sørensen — a genetic and metabolic epidemiology expert from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who was not involved in the new study — said there needs to be a better understanding of the causes and mechanisms of obesity.

“The most pressing question concerns which interventions will be both feasible and effective,” Sørensen wrote in a comment on the research.