The number of children and adolescents worldwide who are obese has increased tenfold over the past four decades.

In 1975, 5 million girls and 6 million boys were obese, but this had risen to 50 million and 74 million, respectively, in 2016

References

New Scientist (2017) Childhood Obesity. New Scientist. 14 October 2017, pp.5.

NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) (2017) Worldwide trends in body-mass index, underweight, overweight, and obesity from 1975 to 2016: a pooled analysis of 2416 population-based measurement studies in 128·9 million children, adolescents, and adults. The Lancet. 390(10113), pp.2627–2642. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32129-3.