Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Abstract Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3–6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017—and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions—was due to…

• MR
  Medical Research Council

  Awards: MC_UU_00017/1, MC_UU_12011/3, MR/N003284/1, MC_UU_12011/1, MC_UU_00019/2, MC_UU_12015/1