Quarter of young adults in Netherlands overweight

A quarter of young adults in the Netherlands are overweight, including 7 percent who have severe weight problems (obesity), Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported on Thursday. The percentage of overweight children and young adults increased in the past decade.

In 2014, 15 percent of 2 to 25-year-olds in the Netherlands were overweight. Last year, that was 17 percent. Among young adults between 18 and 25, the percentage increased from 21 percent in 2014 to 25 percent in 2022. The percentage of children and young adults with obesity remained the same.

Parents’ origin and educational level seem to play important roles in whether children are overweight. Obesity is three times more likely in children aged 2 to 12 whose parents only have pre-vocational education than kids whose parents completed a higher vocational or university education. Weight problems are also more common in children with at least one obese parent. And children and young adults with roots outside Europe are more likely to be overweight than their peers with Dutch-only roots, 24 and 15 percent, respectively.

According to CBS, a large proportion of overweight children and young people exercise too little. Only 29 percent of overweight teenagers meet the Health Council’s exercise guidelines.

The statistics office found no remarkable differences between the genders when it came to being overweight.