NEWS AND VIEWS 13 May 2026 Trajectories of obesity prevalence over the past 45 years reveal patterns of growth, plateau and decline that differ across high-, middle- and low-income countries. By Boyd Swinburn Boyd Swinburn is in the School of Population Health, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. Obesity is a pandemic, meaning that its prevalence has been increasing in almost every country over the past few decades. As might be expected, some countries experienced this rise earlier than others; in some, the increase has been rapid, and in others, slow; and the obesity rate is flattening in certain countries while accelerating in others. Writing in Nature , the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) group 1 has mapped obesity trajectories between 1980 and 2024 for 200 countries and territories.…