Obesity Prediction with Machine Learning Models Comparing Various Algorithm Performances

Obesity poses a significant global health risk due to its links to conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and various cancers, underscoring the need for early prediction to enable timely intervention. This study evaluated the performance of seven machine learning algorithms—Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Random Forest, ExtraTrees, Gradient Boosting, AdaBoost, and XGBoost—in predicting obesity using health and lifestyle data. The models were assessed based on accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, with hyperparameter tuning applied for optimization. The results confirmed that the ExtraTrees Classifier was the best performer, achieving an accuracy of 92.6%, precision of 92.7%, recall of 92.8%, and F1-score of 92.7%. Both Random Forest (91.3% accuracy) and XGBoost (89.9% accuracy) also exhibited strong predictive abilities. In contrast, models like Logistic Regression (74.3% accuracy) and AdaBoost (73.0% accuracy) showed lower effectiveness, emphasizing the advantages of ensemble methods such as ExtraTrees in delivering accurate obesity predictions. These findings suggest that ensemble models provide a promising approach for early diagnosis and targeted healthcare interventions.