Four billion people worldwide will be overweight by 2050, report predicts

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Global eating habits have set the world on course to have more than four billion overweight people by 2050, new research predicts.

And 1.5 billion of those people will be obese, a new report released Wednesday suggests. 

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The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact (PIK) found that, if current trends in what and how people eat in various parts of the world continue, already wide gaps in nutrition will only grow into gulfs over the coming 30 years. 

In order to predict how global nutrition will change in the coming decades, the first-of-its kind study assessed trends in the kinds of food people are eating, how populations are growing, and how food is being produced, and wasted. 

Since 1965, global consumption has been moving toward highly processed foods, high-protein meets, sugary products and carbohydrates. 

Meanwhile, many populations have been skimping on vegetables, plant-based and whole foods and healthy starches. 

The shift means more empty calories and high-fat diets that certainly pack on the pounds, but don't do much to actually fuel our bodies.

Innovations in food science have made many of our meals manufactured, rather than grown.

These processing methods are cheaper, faster and less vulnerable to the whims of weather and natural conditions, making them reliable, but not actually better for our health.

As a result, 29 percent of the world was already overweight by 2010, and nine percent were considered obese, with a body mass index (BMI) over 30.

The U.S. is ahead of the grim curve.

Between 2009 and 2010, 35.7 percent of American adults were already obese. That number had risen to 42.4 percent by the period between 2017 and 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

About 28 percent of the UK's population is now obese.

By 2050, the PIK report estimates that 16 percent of the global population will be obese and nearly half (45 percent) will be overweight.

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