When you add together those both overweight and obese then the figures jump to 66.6% for men and 57.2% for women.
For boys aged up to 19 the obesity rate is 7.4%, while for girls in the same age range the figure is 8.1%.
Commenting on the implications of the study, Professor Klim McPherson from Oxford University in the UK says: "An appropriate rebalancing of the primal needs of humans with food availability is essential, which would entail curtailing many aspects of production and marketing for food industries.
“To prevent unsustainable health consequences, BMI needs to return to what it was 30 years ago. Lobstein calculated that to reduce BMI to 1980 levels in the UK would require an 8% reduction in consumption across the country, costing the food industry roughly £8•7 billion per year.
“The solution has to be mainly political and the questions remain, as with climate change, where is the international will to act decisively in a way that might restrict economic growth in a competitive world, for the public's health?
“Nowhere yet, but voluntary salt reduction might be setting a more achievable trend. Politicians can no longer hide behind ignorance or confusion."
Worldwide, the study shows there has been a startling weight gain over the past 33 years, with the number of adult either obese or overweight rising by 28%, while the figure for children has gone up by 47%.
In absolute terms, that means the number of overweight and obese people has risen from 857m in 1980 to 2.1bn in 2013.
However, the rates vary widely throughout the world with more than half of the world's 671 million obese individuals living in just 10 countries—the US (more than 13%), China and India (15% combined), Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Germany, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
Over the past three decades, the highest rises in obesity levels among women have been in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Honduras and Bahrain, and among men in New Zealand, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the US.