NEAR EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and trends

3.1. Adult Obesity

In the Arab States, obesity among adults 18 years and older was 27.6 percent in 2016, more than double the global prevalence of 13.1 percent (Figure 18 and Table 11). Levels of obesity vary by income-group, with the highest prevalence in high-income countries (33.0 percent); the highest prevalence among regions and subregions globally. This was followed by upper-middle-income countries (29.1 percent), lower-middle-income countries (28.3 percent), low-income countries (18.1 percent), and Arab States LDCs (11.8 percent) (Figure 18 and Table 11).

Obesity in adults increased significantly in the Arab States between 2000 and 2016 by 10.0 percentage points. Among the subregions, the largest increase was in lower-middle-income countries (10.6 percentage points), followed by high-income countries (10.3 percentage points), upper-middle-income countries (9.3 percentage points), low-income countries (6.7 percentage points), and Arab States LDCs (5.7 percentage points) (Table 11).

FIGURE 19 shows adult obesity increased in all countries of the region between 2000 and 2016. The prevalence of adult obesity was over 30 percent in 2016 in nine out of twenty countries: Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Kuwait had the highest prevalence of 37.9 percent. The prevalence of adult obesity was under 20 percent in Comoros, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia and Yemen. The lowest prevalence was seen in Comoros (7.8 percent) and Somalia (8.3 percent).