Percent of overweight or obese Canadian adults based on BMI 2015-2021

In 2021, around 29 percent of adults aged 18 years and older in Canada were obese, while 36 percent were overweight. Although the percentage of overweight adults stayed about the same from 2015 to 2020, the percentage of obese adults in the same time period increased by about three percentage points. In 2020, there were around 8.3 million adults in Canada who were obese, while the number of adults who were overweight was over ten million.

Adolescent obesity

The share of Canadian adolescents who are overweight or obese has slowly increased since 2005. In 2021, around 27.2 percent of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years were either overweight and obese. The total number of obese or overweight Canadian adolescents in 2021 was around 568 thousand. By 2030, it is estimated that Canada will have over 1.1 million children who are obese.

Deaths from obesity

Being overweight or obese are major health problems that can result in early death. In 2017 it was estimated that around 12 percent of all deaths in Canada could be attributed to obesity. At that time, there were around 45 deaths per 100,000 population in Canada that could be attributed to obesity. Diabetes, which is also related to obesity, accounted for about 2.5 percent of all deaths in Canada in 2020, making it the seventh leading cause of death that year.