Young adults at highest risk of weight gain

Young adults aged 18 to 24 are at the highest risk of becoming overweight or developing obesity in the next decade of their life compared to adults in any other age group, and obesity prevention policies should target this group, finds a new study co-led by researchers at UCL. The study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology , found that being a young adult is a more important risk factor for weight gain than sex, ethnicity, geographic region, or socioeconomic area characteristics. The risk of gaining weight is not only highest in the youngest adult age group, but it steadily decreases with age. The researchers looked at anonymised primary care health records from more than 2 million adults (with more than 9 million measurements of BMI and weight) in England between 1998 and 2016 to investigate the risk of weight changes at different ages and among different groups. They found that people aged 18 to 24 were four times more likely to become overweight or develop obesity over the next 10 years than those aged 65 to 74. Young adults classed as overweight or obese were also more likely to move to a higher BMI category (from the overweight category to obesity or from non-severe obesity to severe obesity) than those classed as overweight or with obesity in any other age group. The authors provide the public (for the first time) an online tool to calculate their risk of weight change over the next 1, 5, and 10 years based on an individual's current weight and height, age, sex, ethnicity and socioeconomic area characteristics.