Focusing a national obesity strategy mainly on children will have limited impact, because children make up a minority of the population while obesity and its health burden are greater among adults.
Mariano Farrugia
Adults are the large majority of Malta's population, and the WHO puts obesity at 30.6% among adults against 12.8% among 5 to 19 year olds. But childhood obesity in Malta is high, and prevention in childhood shapes the adult burden later. Malta's last national obesity strategy ran from 2012 to 2020, and we found nothing that replaced it.How we reached this verdict ↓
Analysis and evaluation
The arithmetic behind the claim holds: most people in Malta are adults, and obesity is more than twice as common among them. What the claim leaves out is how serious childhood obesity is in Malta, and that the country currently has no national strategy at all.
Obesity is far more common among adults
Under-18s are a minority of Malta's population. The WHO's estimates for 2024 put obesity at 30.6% among adults and 12.8% among children and adolescents aged 5 to 19. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, the main illnesses linked to obesity, mostly appear in adulthood, so that is where most of the current burden sits. A strategy aimed only at children would not reach the adults who are obese today.
Children still matter
Malta's childhood obesity is high by European standards, and a child with obesity is more likely to remain obese as an adult. The National Audit Office's 2023 review of Malta's work on pre-obesity and obesity covers both groups. Prevention in childhood does not lower today's adult burden, but it shapes tomorrow's.
Malta's strategy has lapsed
Malta's last national strategy, A Healthy Weight for Life, ran from 2012 to 2020. It covered the whole population, with measures for children, adults, workplaces and treatment. It expired six years ago, and we found no strategy that replaced it.
Evaluation
The central argument is supported: a strategy aimed mainly at children would leave most of Malta's current obesity burden untouched. It leaves out that childhood obesity is itself a serious problem in Malta, and that the last strategy took both groups into account before it lapsed.
Editorial note
How we assessed this claim
We treated the statement as two factual questions: whether children are a minority of Malta's population, and whether obesity and its health burden are greater among adults. We used the WHO's estimates for both age groups and Malta's own strategy and audit documents.
Both facts hold, which rules out anything below True but lacks context. It stops short of True because the argument leaves out why strategies target children: Malta's childhood obesity rate is high, and obesity in childhood tends to carry into adulthood.
The claim was reconstructed from the broader point made on the programme rather than quoted as a single sentence.
Limitations
- Child and adult obesity figures are not directly comparable: children are classified by BMI-for-age, adults by fixed BMI cut-offs.
- Health burden can be measured in several ways, including cases, healthcare use and deaths. All of them rise with age for obesity-related disease.
Sources
- World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory: prevalence of obesity among adults and among children and adolescents aged 5 to 19, 2024 (indicators NCD_BMI_30A, NCD_BMI_PLUS2C)
- National Audit Office Malta, A review of the implementation of SDG 2: Addressing pre-obesity and obesity (July 2023)
- Ministry for Health, A Healthy Weight for Life: A National Strategy for Malta 2012-2020
- World Health Organization, WHO European Regional Obesity Report 2022