Childhood Obesity Has Overtaken Underweight: The New Global Map of Malnutrition
Child malnutrition can no longer be understood only as undernutrition. UNICEF’s Feeding Profit report marks a historic turning point: in 2025, obesity among school-age children and adolescents surpassed underweight worldwide for the first time. The report indicates that 188 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 were living with obesity, with global prevalence rising from 3% in 2000 to 9.4% in 2025, while underweight declined from nearly 13% to 9.2%. This shift requires us to move beyond an outdated nutrition framework and recognize today’s double burden: persistent undernutrition in some settings and rapidly expanding excess weight almost everywhere else.
Medically, overweight means unhealthy excess body weight for age, sex, and height, while obesity is a more severe state associated with insulin resistance, hypertension, dyslipidemia, fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and later cardiovascular disease. Its pathophysiology is not simply “overeating.” It reflects neuroendocrine regulation, genetic susceptibility, sleep, stress, physical inactivity, and especially obesogenic food environments. UNICEF highlights that many children are continuously exposed to cheap, heavily marketed ultra-processed foods, while nutritious options remain less available and less affordable.
The report draws on data from more than 190 countries, including household surveys, modelled estimates, projections, and polls. For ages 5–19, it used country-level measured data coordinated by NCD-RisC and projected recent obesity and underweight trends. Its central findings are epidemiologically striking: obesity now exceeds underweight in every world region except sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and digital marketing of sugary drinks, snack foods, and fast food reaches most surveyed young people. UNICEF calls for concrete action: marketing restrictions, better food labelling, healthy taxes and subsidies, stronger school food protections, and improved surveillance systems.
From a pediatric and public health policy perspective, this is no longer just a clinical issue; it is a structural one. If health systems wait until a child presents with established obesity, they are intervening too late. Effective prevention requires policy action on schools, marketing, pricing, food access, and social protection. This nutritional transition is tightly linked to the prevention of metabolic disease: every year lost in childhood raises the risk of earlier diabetes, hypertension, and liver disease. This report is both a warning and a policy blueprint.
Fuente institucional:
UNICEF, Feeding Profit: How food environments are failing children / UNICEF press release on the 2025 Child Nutrition Report.
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