ASIA AND THE PACIFIC Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023: Statistics and Trends

2.3 Overweight among children under 5 years of age

Overweight and obesity are complex and multifaceted problems. While genetics can increase an individual’s susceptibility to overweight, it cannot explain population-level increases over time. Intrauterine growth, infant feeding, and eating habits during preschool are significant determinants of child overweight, which increase the risk of obesity in adulthood. From 2012 until 2020, the region experienced slight increases in the prevalence of overweight among children under five years of age. However, between 2020 and 2021 there was no increase in the percent of overweight children under five years of age. At 5.1 percent in 2022, this is slightly lower than the world prevalence of 5.6 percent. Among the subregions, only South-eastern Asia exhibited a decline. The other subregions increased, although the increases were small, ranging from 0.1 percent points for Southern Asia to 0.5 percent points for Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand) (Table 9).

In 2022, by subregion, the highest prevalence of overweight among children under 5 years of age was observed in Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand) at close to 14 percent (Figure 14). By country within this subregion, the highest prevalences were found in Papua New Guinea (close to 16 percent) and Tonga (over 10 percent). Countries belonging to Eastern Asia, in particular Mongolia, also showed a high prevalence of overweight children under five years of age. For South-eastern Asia and for Southern Asia, Indonesia and Bhutan, respectively, had the highest prevalence of overweight children under five years of age (Figure 15).