Introduction:

In 2016, more than 1900 million adults of 18 or more years old were overweight, of which more than 650 million were obese, with a predominance of females in both categories. The number of obese people in the world has tripled from 1975 to 2016.

Objective:

To describe the prevalence and trend of overweight and obesity in adults in the world.

Methods:

It was performed a bibliographical review that used Google Scholar as scientific information searcher. There were used as keywords: obesity, overweight, prevalence and trend. There were evaluated review and research articles, which generally had less than 10 years of being published in Spanish, Portuguese or English languages, which conform to the subject. This allowed the study of 70 articles, of which 45 were referenced.

Conclusions:

Overweight and obesity have a high prevalence in most geographical regions and worldwide. The evolutive increase experienced by both entities in recent decades in the adult population speaks in favor of its upward trend in the world we live in.

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