Obesity among adults in England has doubled over the past three decades, according to a new analysis by the King’s Fund, an independent health think tank. The report found that adult obesity rates rose from around 15% in 1993 to a record 30% in 2024, meaning 14.3 million adults are now classed as obese or severely obese.

The comparison year, 1993, was chosen deliberately. It was the year after John Major’s Conservative government published the country’s first national obesity strategy. Since then, successive UK governments of different political colours have introduced 14 separate strategies aimed at reversing the trend, yet the King’s Fund analysis concludes that none has succeeded in bending the curve downward.

The think tank calculates that there are at least 7.2 million more obese adults in England today than there would be had rates simply held steady at 1993 levels, a gap it frames as the cumulative cost of policy failure rather than a single missed opportunity.

A generational shift among young adults

The steepest rise has occurred among young adults. In 1993, just 6% of 16 to 24 year-olds in England were classed as obese or severely obese. By 2024, that figure had tripled to 18%, according to the analysis, suggesting the conditions driving obesity have intensified for the generation now entering adulthood rather than easing over time.

The health consequences are already visible in hospital data. More than 1 million hospital admissions in England were linked to obesity in the most recent year on record, a 17% increase compared with 2018/19, the King’s Fund found.

Inequality runs through every measure

The report places particular emphasis on deprivation. Obesity-related hospital admission rates are 2.4 times higher in England’s most deprived areas than elsewhere. Among children, the gap has been widening for years: the difference in obesity rates between Year 6 pupils (aged 10 to 11) from the most and least deprived backgrounds grew from 8.5 to 13.3 percentage points between 2006/7 and 2019/20.

Set against European peers, the UK’s disparity stands out. The gap in overweight and obesity rates between children from the least and most affluent families in the UK is 26 percentage points, compared with an EU average gap of just 8 percentage points, according to the King’s Fund’s figures.

The King’s Fund warns policymakers against over-relying on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs to solve the obesity crisis, calling instead for those who would benefit most not to be priced out of access.

That caution comes as GLP-1 receptor agonists, a class of injectable drugs including semaglutide, have driven a surge of interest in pharmaceutical solutions to obesity across Europe and beyond. The King’s Fund’s message is that such drugs cannot substitute for addressing the structural and economic drivers of weight gain, particularly for lower-income communities where both obesity and its complications are concentrated.

The findings were first summarised in a news brief published by the BMJ, drawing on the King’s Fund’s full analysis, which was also reported by outlets including LBC and Health & Protection. Fourteen strategies in, the think tank’s conclusion is blunt: designing another obesity policy is easier than making one work.

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