New modelling predicts 35 per cent of adults will be obese by 2025, with younger people now gaining weight at higher rates than ever before.

The University of Sydney’s School of Public Health’s new model has predicted how bad the obesity epidemic is expected to get in the next 10 years.

It forecasts obesity among adults will reach 35 per cent by 2025, up from its current level of 28 per cent, while 13 per cent of adults will have a BMI of over 35 – up from 9 per cent in 2014/15.

Women will fare worse, with one in six predicted to be severely obese compared to one in 10 men.

“So currently severe obesity is about 11 per cent in women and 8 per cent in men, and our projections are showing that will go up to about 15.5 per cent in women and 10 per cent in men,” said Associate Professor Alison Hayes, who led the development of the model.

“We already at unacceptably high levels of severe obesity, but they will increase.”

Professor Hayes said the model would help policymakers determine how and when to tackle obesity.

“And I can tell you from modelling we’ve done so far that if in the model you reduce weight gain, we’re not talking about weight loss, if you put a 10 per cent change for young people as compared to older people, you get more of an effect on reducing obesity,” she said.

“And that’s because, contrary to popular belief, it’s younger adults in the population gain more weight in any one year than older adults.”

Professor Hayes said Australia, like other developed countries, was failing to meet World Health Organisation targets.

‘Higher classes of obesity’

Professor Stephen Simpson from Obesity Australia said despite educational campaigns about the effects of obesity, public health policies were clearly failing to tackle the problem.

“I think it just reflects how difficult it is to limit weight gain in what has become an increasingly obesogenic environment where it’s more difficult to live an active life,” he said.

“As we become more and more urbanised and as our food supply becomes more and more dominated by high energy dense convenience foods, then it just becomes incredibly difficult to prevent at a population level that increase.”

Young adults are gaining more weight than they were in previous generations. Photo: Getty

He said part of the problem was the assumption that the individual is at fault and can change their lifestyle.

“We also need I think fundamentally to realign commercial drivers and political drivers with betterment of health rather than degrading health, which is currently the way things work,” he said.

“The economic incentives to for example the food industries are not designed to improve our health.”

Professor Simpson said while Australia could be considered a nanny state if it enforces government regulation and taxation on food, it is also a necessary move.

“There are occasions where society needs to take charge of the opportunities for people to express their fundamental right to live a healthy life,” he said.

“So it’s too easy to say it’s your fault and we don’t want to get involved as a government, and as you go down the slippery slide from overweight to obesity to, higher classes of obesity it becomes out of your control, you need help.”

-ABC