{"id":909,"date":"2026-06-29T14:23:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/new-obesity-figures-highlight-the-income-divide\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T14:23:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:23:55","slug":"new-obesity-figures-highlight-the-income-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/29\/new-obesity-figures-highlight-the-income-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"New obesity figures highlight the income divide"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span> Ms Deborah Waters\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The number of obese adults in England rose from 26% in 2019 to 30% in 2025, according to a new analysis of 55 million people<\/a>. Nearly one in three adults are now obese.<\/p>\n

But averages hide a lot, and behind this one are two very different trends.<\/p>\n

The sharpest rises are among the young. New obesity cases went up 16% among people in their twenties and 19% among those in their thirties \u2013 compared with a national rise of just 4%. Many of these are people of childbearing age, and the researchers warn that this could start an intergenerational cycle, since obesity in parents raises the chances of obesity in their children.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a stark gap between rich and poor. New diagnoses were 35% more common in the poorest fifth of the country than the richest \u2013 a gap that was wider among women and nearly doubled among Asian women. In parts of north-east England, nearly half of adults are obese. In the wealthiest pockets of central London, fewer than one in ten are. And the areas seeing the fastest rises are the most deprived ones.<\/p>\n

Children are following the same path. The latest National Child Measurement Programme<\/a> found that by the time they reach year six (ages ten and 11), children in the poorest neighbourhoods are more than twice as likely to be obese (29%) compared with those in the wealthiest neighbourhoods (14%). For severe obesity, the gap is more than fourfold and is still widening.<\/p>\n

How did this happen?<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s tempting to see this as a story about willpower \u2013 millions of people simply failing to eat less or move more. But the evidence points somewhere else.<\/p>\n

Weight gain rises and falls with the environment people live in: the food on offer, how it\u2019s sold and how easy it is to be active. And that environment isn\u2019t the same for everyone.<\/p>\n

Cheap, heavily processed food is now the easy option rather than the exception. It\u2019s heavily marketed and designed to be moreish. Meanwhile, daily life has been built around cars rather than walking or cycling. These pressures hit poorer areas hardest, where there tend to be more fast food shops, fewer parks, and less time or money to spend on eating well. The cheapest calories are often the unhealthiest ones, and the people with the least money are the most surrounded by them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to ask why younger people in particular can\u2019t just show more self-control. But willpower only gets you so far against an environment stacked against you, and today\u2019s twenty- and thirty-somethings are the first generation to have grown up entirely inside it.<\/p>\n

Governments have begun to act on the environment rather than blaming individuals \u2013 though only recently. In the UK, since January, adverts for junk food have been banned online and restricted on TV before 9pm<\/a>, along with a ban on \u201cbuy one, get one free\u201d deals for unhealthy food. These are welcome steps. But they\u2019re early ones, and they won\u2019t undo an environment that\u2019s already been built over decades.<\/p>\n

If the surroundings explain how we got here, a new generation of weight-loss drugs may decide where we go next. And right now, that doesn\u2019t look like it\u2019s heading towards a fairer outcome.<\/p>\n

Drugs such as Mounjaro and Wegovy are the first medicines that genuinely work for weight loss. In theory, they could reach the communities carrying the heaviest burden first and start to close the gap. But this isn\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n

Around 90% of people in the UK taking these drugs<\/a> are paying for them privately, at \u00a3130 to \u00a3350 a month (more than \u00a33,000 a year). An analysis by the Health Foundation<\/a>, a UK charity, found that people in the least deprived areas are more than twice as likely to be taking one of these drugs as those in the most deprived areas, for every person living with obesity.<\/p>\n

The NHS route is tightly rationed<\/a>, reserved first for those with the most urgent medical need and the longest waits. So for now, the people most able to benefit are simply those who can afford to pay. A treatment that could shrink the gap is instead set to widen it.<\/p>\n

\n \"Weight-loss
\n Most people taking the weight-loss jabs in the UK are paying for them privately.<\/span>
\n Edugrafo\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is why the headline figure can be misleading. As more people pay privately for these drugs, the \u201cone in three\u201d statistic may stay the same \u2013 or even fall \u2013 as wealthier people lose weight. But that apparent calm would be hiding something else: a country splitting into two. Improvement for those who can afford it. A deepening crisis for those who can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

England doesn\u2019t have one obesity problem. It has two: a shrinking one for those who can afford to treat it, and a growing one for those who can\u2019t. <\/p>\n

No drug will fix that on its own. Unless the government tackles what\u2019s actually driving obesity \u2013 cheap junk food, aggressive marketing, and neighbourhoods built around cars instead of people \u2013 it will become one more health problem that depends on your bank balance, not your biology.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Philip Broadbent receives funding from The Wellcome Trust 223499\/Z\/21\/Z<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ms Deborah Waters\/Shutterstock.com The number of obese adults in England rose from 26% in 2019 to 30% in 2025, according to a new analysis of 55 million people. Nearly one in three adults are now obese. But averages hide a lot, and behind this one are two very different trends. The sharpest rises are among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}