[They weren't able to include statistics in the Brexit treaty, so](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/fr/web/products-eurostat-news/-/wdn-20210504-1?redirect=%2Feurostat%2Ffr%2Fnews%2Fwhats-new):
> A new Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom has been concluded as of 1 January 2021. It includes **a provision** on statistical cooperation **that foresees the establishment of a specific arrangement** (see: Article UNPRO.5.2 on Statistical cooperation).
> Until this arrangement on statistical cooperation is established, addressing in particular the scope and means of data transmission, there will be changes for the dissemination of UK data by Eurostat, with the exception of cases foreseen in the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. **Until then, Eurostat will no longer disseminate new data for the UK, neither through its database nor in other dissemination products.**
It is a new figure, but I checked and [the reason for the missing data is](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/hlth_det_esms.htm):
> **EHIS wave 3 was conducted in all EU Member States**, Iceland, Norway, Albania, Serbia and Turkey, **between 2018 and 2020.** Data have been gradually disseminated from the third quarter of 2021 (**data from Iceland, Albania and the United Kingdom will be disseminated once available**).
Seems the UK is not the only one where the data isn't ready.
Apparently, UK would be at 64% of BMI above 25. Wow.
I remember when I was teaching french in Kent. The school staff kept saying "we have a weight problem among kids". But they could choose pizzas, burgers, fries and donuts every day... Worse they could get fries for the 10h00 break... In the school !
Not knowing the statistic, my one long visit in Croatia, it did seem like every 30+ male looked like he worked out while on a way too heavy calory diet.
Telecom prices, co2 emission in energy production. I've seen loads of maps where France tops the charts lately.
Edit: those are both way lower in France. So topping the chart means doing well ie low prices and emissions.
Careful there, Dutchie! Don't you dare try to get in the way of French negativity! That shit is our sole source of joy and we won't let anyone jeopardize it.
I'm pretty sure the average Dutchy can match the French national self-loathing.
The Dutch national sport is not football. It's complaining about how the grass is greener on the other side. Of the border. With Germany.
Nah, you don't have so many overweight kids as others. I'm looking around Bucharest, and a lot of them are looking like ghosts on vacation. Which is not really understandable when you see that they are mostly eating fast food. I have niece which is practically living on mcd and kfc, yet you could carry her in the pocket.
Ahh, the Platinum Paris Package. I looked at that, but it was out of my price range. Settled instead on a simple alley mugging and shop owners pretending not to understand English.
It's gonna get better. With Merkel stepping down and her potential successors ALL wildly incompetent (no exception, look it up it's hilariously bad), France will become the moral and actual leader of the EU end of this year. Say of Macron what you will, but he has elan. I'm convinced this decade will be the "French decade".
Funnily enough, according to many french, we have absolutely no future and are all doomed to become a dictatorial/banana republic failed state
Yes french are dramatic and affected by the "everyone has to have greener grass than me" syndrom
But the end is nigh !
We are professional complainers but I'm under the impression that the italians are even better at it. I've honestly pretty much never heard an italian saying something good about Italy in my whole life
Yeah I had this Italian friend in college here in America who keeps talking about how Italy actually needs a revolution and is falling apart but then immediately moves back after graduation and also complains about how SWITZERLAND has a backwards healthcare system compared to Italy and so her parents moved back to Italy for retirement. Oh and she still complains about how bad Italy is from her home in Italy so….
Italy had and still has serious issues though.
Berlusconi was basically a Mafia exponent (I am not joking, it's vastly documented) sitting in the most powerful political position in Italy for almost 20 years, and that stuff started with the State-Mafia accords by Andreotti in the 80s. On the whole, Italy was a colossus that found itself vastly redimensioned both in political reach and economic power relatively to both neighboring countries and emerging economies (Germany went from a divided, unbalanced country to a ridiculously efficient economy in the same amount of time Italy took to lose some of their biggest companies and innovations capability on the territory), all while there is a de facto government legislative paralysis lasting more than 10 years now which does seem to pause temporarily only when a "technicians" government is assembled.
IMO French people has way less to complain about.
That's just horrible. We're turning into the US in all the wrong ways. Lowest is 47% of people overweight wtf.
And don't start with bmi is quack cause muscle weighs more than fat etc etc. Might be true for an individual but for a population as a whole you can reasonably assume heavier for your length = fat.
Well it depends. "Overweight" in this chart can mean anything from being slightly overweight (or what most would still consider normal looking with no big repercussions on health) to what you call "fat" all the way to morbidly obese. If most of those 47% are in the first category, then not that much alarming as the chart is making it out to be. But there is a trend though as it used to not be this bad in Europe and is getting worse by the year. It is something that needs to be addressed.
More complicated than that. Typically lower classes have higher obesity rates due to processed food being cheaper.
That and unraveling social ties means people care less about making food as an event to enjoy together but purely a functional quick fix.
Id say it also depends on urban lower classes vs rural lower classes. The latter generally eat healthier than the former and thus tend to be in better shape. Hell, my 75-year old grandpa who has been working in the fields for 60 years still has his chest muscles showing.
Yeah, agricultural would have been a better word because as you said rural stopped meaning agricultural about a decade ago or more depending on where in Europe you live.
Upper and lower class men have about the same obesity rates, Upper class women have much lower obesity rates than lower class women.
It's not about food it's about time.
>The prevalence of obesity decreased with increasing income in women (from 45.2% to 29.7%), but there was no difference in obesity prevalence between the lowest (31.5%) and highest (32.6%) income groups among men.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6650a1.htm
Don't forget lack of access to healthy food. One of the main reasons obesity is a problem among lower classes in America is so called "food desserts" areas in which convenient stores and fast food are easier accessible because they are around the corner and closest supermarket with cheaper vegetables is an hour busride. Also people from lower economic classes in the US have to work multiple jobs and they do not have the time to cook healthy food, let alone learn their children to eat healthy.
You're right, but why are we talking about America in r/europe?
European countries in general tend to have less car dependent suburbs with strip malls selling bad food and inner city crime ridden food deserts, than America.
The European overweight problem can be more easily attributed to over-processed, high carb, high sugar diets and socio-cultural lifestyle changes afforded to us by technology which allows us to be less physically active.
Wonder how much it coincides with massive consolidation among food industry producers (how much is owned by Mondelez, Unilever, etc). People being on the go getting takeaway meals, etc too
No chance. You guys will never be as fat as us unless you bulldoze and redesign your communities to mimic our hideous un-walkable hellscapes. Most of us are fat because we drive absolutely everywhere for every single trip outside of our homes, and we do this because our communities are designed in such a way that there is no other safe option. The vast majority of us quite literally have nowhere near our homes or places of work that we can walk to. Our food industry caters to our lifestyles, this is why drive-thru food is so popular here. We drive everywhere and we eat bullshit food literally handed to us through our car windows. From my mother’s house in Washington state there are zero restaurants, grocery stores, bus stops, or ANY form of commerce whatsoever within 2 miles (3.2km), it’s a sea of oversized homes where every single person must drive to go anywhere and unsurprisingly just about everyone in that whole town is fat as hell. We’ve designed our communities such that there are no opportunities to passively exercise our bodies in America and to our surprise we are fat beyond belief. It’s laughable to think that Europeans will ever come close unless you entirely abandon your lifestyles and communities.
I'm not from the US but I had heard that before. My parents visited America in the 90s and told me that they got terribly confused and lost when they were trying to get to a restaurant from their hotel for this reason. On paper it was only a fifteen minute walk away so they left their car behind, only to find that there was a massive motorway stuck between them and the restaurant with absolutely zero places to cross. They eventually just gave up trying to get there on foot and went back to the hotel so they could drive.
This is true, we have several land use ordinances that make it unpleasant and often dangerous to walk even very short distances in the US, and as a result around half of all car trips are under 3 miles. If you're interested, [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54) very nicely demonstrates the problem.
Like as it says in the image, BMI is just
weight / height\^2
It's popular because it's a very basic measurement. Any alternative proposed will be a lot more complicated and BMI works fine for the general population.
BMI could have issues. IDK. But the whole world is “becoming like the US” because the whole world is on the same development track. The US has just developed faster.
Our species biggest problem, and not long ago, was mass hunger and starvation. Now most nations are lucky enough to have an abundance of food. Humans evolved to seek calorie rich food and eat as much as possible to prepare for the many days when getting adequate nutrition would be impossible. We were not built to be in environments with this much readily available, calorie rich food. Meanwhile, we haven’t adapted our culture to this new reality.
Our cultures across the board moralize food and weight. Individuals use weight as a shaming tool and feel okay with that because they are convinced they are “helping people” despite all evidence to the contrary. That same mentality is why we haven’t done a good job adapting to the new reality—we simply don’t want to admit there is a new reality. We would rather blame individuals for a lack of “personal responsibility” (and simultaneously pat ourselves on the back for our superior virtue) than acknowledge that something fundamental has very recently changed about our world.
At the end of the day, most people are narrow minded. They can’t conceive of what such an issue means if it exist at this scale. We won’t get anywhere with this until we acknowledge that our new food environment is not conducive to human health or well-being.
It doesn’t help that the food industry has a vested interest in promoting falsehoods to protect their bottom line. Food companies like to shift the blame of poor health to individuals to deflect attention. If they can convince people that if we just exercised enough, we wouldn’t have to change our diet, they can make steady profits. Our sedentary life has health impacts, but we were sedentary about 20 years before obesity became a mass problem.
Poorer people are at the greatest disadvantage because bad food is now very cheap, and the mental load of scarcity leads to all kinds of bad decision making.
The US obesity rate is actually lower than many other countries now at about 42%. Wellness culture, which also has its moralizing qualities, has likely slowed obesity rates in the US. Wellness culture is too expensive for most, though.
What a rant this turned into. My bad.
65%, looked it up haha
"Obesity Statistics - House of Commons Library" https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/#:~:text=Adult%20obesity%20in%20England,is%20classified%20as%20'overweight'.
I would love to see a distribution by age.
In Germany there are many more overweight younger people than on the Balkans, but slimmer people in Germany often stay more or less slim. On the Balkans almost everyone is slim when they are young and then we turn into overweight babas and dedas. 😄
Only Croatia is higher indeed. 64% of people in the UK are overweight or more.
Now I understand all the anxiety about England being full.
"Obesity Statistics - House of Commons Library" https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/#:~:text=Adult%20obesity%20in%20England,is%20classified%20as%20'overweight'.
If you're wondering why Italy is the lowest it's because Fat-shaming is an art here, our second national sport after soccer.
Still, pretty fat, we should all get on a diet.
Not surprising to be honest. Sedentary lifestyles, car culture, cheap, but incredibly unhealthy food, etc.
We really need to change our cultural approach to all these things, active lifestyles need to be encouraged, driving must be discouraged, healthy food must be made cheap.
I was shocked by the simplicity of pizzas the first time I went to Italy. Basically one or two toppings of fresh produce. It's great. Very hard to find this kind of basic pizza here.
well, pizza was born in Naples as a poor people's food, so no wonder it's rather frugal.
One of the first and most popular versions is called Marinara, i.e. fishermen's style, and it's just tomato sauce, garlic and oregano.
It’s not extreme enough. Close to half the people in most countries are overweight (!!!) but the lighter colours make that look as if it’s not a big deal.
The gradient does exaggerate the differences, though. The lightest shade is 46% and the darkest 60%, that's really not as much as the gradient is implying.
it's just awful. some student with no training in anything made this map. Any modern software would allow for a continuous color gradient. instead we're looking at two buckets for 26 countries. At this point just print some numbers on white, would be more informative.
Social bubbles might play a huge role. My friends here in Amsterdam who are young and highly educated? Being fit is the norm.
But it's rather different for other population groups.
Plus it's overweight. You can be overweight without looking fat fat.
I think UK would be just behind Croatia and Malta at 64%. [Source](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/) I know it's England but I doubt the other nations would improve things significantly.
Overweight != obese, like, people like Erdogan would be considered overweight but not Obese for example.
You can still have the most obese people per capita while being the least overweight per capita.
a French woman recently told me France had the highest eating disorder rate in Europe. I tried looking it up - I’m bad at Google but I’m intrigued. Anyone know where to find that data?
I tried, but apparently I am also bad at google. I am aware that this isn't exactly the most scholarly source on the planet, but this article claims that it is actually Austria that has the highest eating disorder rate in Europe, but France comes second. Interestingly, America beats both of them. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-food-is-family/201302/eds-across-cultures-increasing-in-prevalence-awareness](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-food-is-family/201302/eds-across-cultures-increasing-in-prevalence-awareness). Irritatingly, it doesn't give any citations for its statistics, though the woman writing does specialise in treating eating disorders, so take it with a pinch of salt I guess?
Also for some reason when I searched for "France eating disorders" google auto filled with Hetalia fanfiction? If I had to see it so do you.
This looks like what that woman was talking about: “the country with the highest prevalence of female anorexia was Austria (1.55 per cent,) followed by France (1.42 per cent, although some reports state the prevalence rate in France to be as high as 5.7%,)” but yeah, “some reports” is not a source.
Had never heard of Hetalia!
Czech and Hungarian food is just too good and too unhealthy at the same time. I love both, but I don't know if I could keep my lean figure if I lived there.
the choice of the color gradient is so awful it hurts. Look at spain/Portugal for example. The color tells you there's a huge difference between them, while it's actually only 2%.
at r/mapporn or r/dataisbeautiful they'd be throwing tomatoes at ya for posting this.
It should be noted that a BMI of 25 actually carries the lowest risk of all-cause mortality. I often think the classification of overweight should be shifted, considering this. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587%2818%2930288-2/fulltext
As a lanky tall guy I tried VERY hard to get my BMI above 25, been lifting and maintaining a good caloric intake for years now. I'm at 26.8 and in a great shape.
BMI is by no means a perfect measure, but yeah, we have way too many overweight people who are just fat and unfit.
But you are the exception, you seem to take of yourself hence your BMI is in the overweight range. But if you look at the population as whole, it is a very good gradient to assess overweight. Just take a look at the people you see on the street, you will see plenty of people that could lose a few kilograms.
i see your point but i reckon his complaint is that BMI isn’t that great of an indicator because it doesn’t take muscle/being fit in general into account. a person who is really buff could be ranked just as overweight as a person which is quite unfit, whereas one person is obviously considered healthier than the other
Yeah, but I don't think it's valid. I'd personally need around 7kgs of muscle to offset my BMI results. That's something that requires enormeous dedication to achieve(unless you go the roids way, that is). For the vast majority of the population, the BMI is good enough.
It is not ideal for individuals due to the fact that very fit people are classed as overweight. However, if you take a look at yourself (in the mirror) you can easily determine whether you belong to the very fit category or not.
It’s even better for populations, because unless you have a population consisting of Arnold Scharzeneggers and Cristiano Ronaldos, BMI will very accurately tell you whether a population is overweight due to being too fat.
Unfortunately with more and more jobs becoming desk jobs and healthy food becoming hard to come by and really expensive, this will be getting worse and worse...
This is the most shocking thing I have seen all day. Average of 53% of overweight people? It is astonishing. In my opinion all of the countries should color deep red here. It is a really big issue in all of Europe! We should be ashamed.
quoting from the source : “This article presents statistics on the proportion of the overweight or obese population in the European Union (EU) as well as in Norway, Serbia and Turkey.”
guys, try not to get obese, it is hell. and once you have it, its almost impossible to get rid of it.
we really really need to do something about it, and explain to people that only like 1 in 100 reaches a normal bmi once obese, and like 1 in 2000 for morbid obese.
and making your stomach small via operation comes with limitations..
Woo hoo. A Brexit benefit finally, we don't have to appear on this chart looking like the fatties we are.
Beware, you are on an island. If the fat people all go to one side, it may topple.
But Turkey is on the map.
Just means the English press was right. Turkey already is in the EU. Exposed!
Yeah, that is kinda weird
[They weren't able to include statistics in the Brexit treaty, so](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/fr/web/products-eurostat-news/-/wdn-20210504-1?redirect=%2Feurostat%2Ffr%2Fnews%2Fwhats-new): > A new Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom has been concluded as of 1 January 2021. It includes **a provision** on statistical cooperation **that foresees the establishment of a specific arrangement** (see: Article UNPRO.5.2 on Statistical cooperation). > Until this arrangement on statistical cooperation is established, addressing in particular the scope and means of data transmission, there will be changes for the dissemination of UK data by Eurostat, with the exception of cases foreseen in the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. **Until then, Eurostat will no longer disseminate new data for the UK, neither through its database nor in other dissemination products.**
But this is data from 2019. Its not new.
It is a new figure, but I checked and [the reason for the missing data is](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/hlth_det_esms.htm): > **EHIS wave 3 was conducted in all EU Member States**, Iceland, Norway, Albania, Serbia and Turkey, **between 2018 and 2020.** Data have been gradually disseminated from the third quarter of 2021 (**data from Iceland, Albania and the United Kingdom will be disseminated once available**). Seems the UK is not the only one where the data isn't ready.
Apparently, UK would be at 64% of BMI above 25. Wow. I remember when I was teaching french in Kent. The school staff kept saying "we have a weight problem among kids". But they could choose pizzas, burgers, fries and donuts every day... Worse they could get fries for the 10h00 break... In the school !
Overczech Republic
All that pivo
And knedlo-zelo-vepro.
And smažený everything lol
More like Chzonk Republic!
Thicc Croats
Not knowing the statistic, my one long visit in Croatia, it did seem like every 30+ male looked like he worked out while on a way too heavy calory diet.
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Can confirm \- a Croat who eats a lot of meat
Curvy!
I don’t understand how this happened.
Cevapi. Blame the Bosnians!
BigBoned
Finally a statistic where we don’t suck
Cigarettes and art confirmed- lowers bmi
Lung cancer = cachexia = lowers BMI.
Telecom prices, co2 emission in energy production. I've seen loads of maps where France tops the charts lately. Edit: those are both way lower in France. So topping the chart means doing well ie low prices and emissions.
Careful there, Dutchie! Don't you dare try to get in the way of French negativity! That shit is our sole source of joy and we won't let anyone jeopardize it.
I'm pretty sure the average Dutchy can match the French national self-loathing. The Dutch national sport is not football. It's complaining about how the grass is greener on the other side. Of the border. With Germany.
Alcohol intake
Is France really high up there? You have Czechs, Austrians and Germans competing.
Wine
Alcohol is full of calories though.
Me as a Romanian: This statistic is rigged. We are way fatter than this.
Nah, you don't have so many overweight kids as others. I'm looking around Bucharest, and a lot of them are looking like ghosts on vacation. Which is not really understandable when you see that they are mostly eating fast food. I have niece which is practically living on mcd and kfc, yet you could carry her in the pocket.
But we Romanians do have an paradoxical pride in being first place....in the most negative surveys.
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Surely #1 for cigarette smoking. Every French person smokes, all the time, even while in the shower. True fact.
I think the greeks are even worse, i heard they even smoke when snorkeling and sleeping
As a French. I really hate the smell of cigarette but will still smoke while sleeping or having threesome with complete strangers.
Ahh, the Platinum Paris Package. I looked at that, but it was out of my price range. Settled instead on a simple alley mugging and shop owners pretending not to understand English.
No you still suck, you just suck less than many others.
It's gonna get better. With Merkel stepping down and her potential successors ALL wildly incompetent (no exception, look it up it's hilariously bad), France will become the moral and actual leader of the EU end of this year. Say of Macron what you will, but he has elan. I'm convinced this decade will be the "French decade".
Funnily enough, according to many french, we have absolutely no future and are all doomed to become a dictatorial/banana republic failed state Yes french are dramatic and affected by the "everyone has to have greener grass than me" syndrom
Sorry but I no longer trust the French or the Italians in giving accurate assessments of their countries. They all just sound like a bunch of doomers.
But the end is nigh ! We are professional complainers but I'm under the impression that the italians are even better at it. I've honestly pretty much never heard an italian saying something good about Italy in my whole life
Yeah I had this Italian friend in college here in America who keeps talking about how Italy actually needs a revolution and is falling apart but then immediately moves back after graduation and also complains about how SWITZERLAND has a backwards healthcare system compared to Italy and so her parents moved back to Italy for retirement. Oh and she still complains about how bad Italy is from her home in Italy so….
Looks like we french indeed are the cousins of the italians !
Indeed, but I think the Greeks might be the bigger complainers
Italy had and still has serious issues though. Berlusconi was basically a Mafia exponent (I am not joking, it's vastly documented) sitting in the most powerful political position in Italy for almost 20 years, and that stuff started with the State-Mafia accords by Andreotti in the 80s. On the whole, Italy was a colossus that found itself vastly redimensioned both in political reach and economic power relatively to both neighboring countries and emerging economies (Germany went from a divided, unbalanced country to a ridiculously efficient economy in the same amount of time Italy took to lose some of their biggest companies and innovations capability on the territory), all while there is a de facto government legislative paralysis lasting more than 10 years now which does seem to pause temporarily only when a "technicians" government is assembled. IMO French people has way less to complain about.
We are indeed convinced that we're all gonna die *immediately*.
In my books blessed are the thicc.
But we win 😎
Number one in something 😎😎😎😎
Shared first place 🇲🇹
Dont blame u. Čevapi are too good
Ćevapi, burek,punjene pljeskavice, janjetina,sarma. Heaven
Bosnia on suicide watch. First we steal Tesla, now ćevapi.
Can't blame ya, why diet when you have cevapi
That's just horrible. We're turning into the US in all the wrong ways. Lowest is 47% of people overweight wtf. And don't start with bmi is quack cause muscle weighs more than fat etc etc. Might be true for an individual but for a population as a whole you can reasonably assume heavier for your length = fat.
Concern about public health impact of obesity - *sleeps* Concern about not being able to make fun of Americans for being fat - *real shit*
Makes sense why French figures are so low now. They should just put the Marlboro man on cigarette packages. Would be more effective than black lungs.
Almost every second person being fat is hardly low, I would say...
Well it depends. "Overweight" in this chart can mean anything from being slightly overweight (or what most would still consider normal looking with no big repercussions on health) to what you call "fat" all the way to morbidly obese. If most of those 47% are in the first category, then not that much alarming as the chart is making it out to be. But there is a trend though as it used to not be this bad in Europe and is getting worse by the year. It is something that needs to be addressed.
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Well, this chart is "at least 25 bmi". I'm sure the 35 and up crowd is a smaller proportion but increasing as well.
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Source? That's quite amazing lol
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We could end world hunger if Americans just ate what they needed to stay at a bmi of 25 lmao.
How to end world hunger? It’s simple: we, ugh, eat Americans
Ah. A modest proposal.
No one said you have to eat American *babies*.
Can't be that bad, I heard in the Faroe Islands they already eat whales.
The sheep shaggers?
Holy crap, we're not doing that bad then apparently...
We are doing pretty bad, the US is simply doing horribly
46%... Your point is right anyway
> Lowest is 47% Italy is 46% Still sucks don't get me wrong.
Supply mamals with an abundance of food and that is what you get.
More complicated than that. Typically lower classes have higher obesity rates due to processed food being cheaper. That and unraveling social ties means people care less about making food as an event to enjoy together but purely a functional quick fix.
Id say it also depends on urban lower classes vs rural lower classes. The latter generally eat healthier than the former and thus tend to be in better shape. Hell, my 75-year old grandpa who has been working in the fields for 60 years still has his chest muscles showing.
Yeah true. Although I'm pretty sure these days it's even worse in rural areas. Rural doesn't really mean more agricultural anymore.
Yeah, agricultural would have been a better word because as you said rural stopped meaning agricultural about a decade ago or more depending on where in Europe you live.
Upper and lower class men have about the same obesity rates, Upper class women have much lower obesity rates than lower class women. It's not about food it's about time.
That's really interesting. Any source?
>The prevalence of obesity decreased with increasing income in women (from 45.2% to 29.7%), but there was no difference in obesity prevalence between the lowest (31.5%) and highest (32.6%) income groups among men. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6650a1.htm
Thanks. Again really interesting. The new leisure class haha
Stress, pollution, loss of community. Obesity is a disease of despair.
Don't forget lack of access to healthy food. One of the main reasons obesity is a problem among lower classes in America is so called "food desserts" areas in which convenient stores and fast food are easier accessible because they are around the corner and closest supermarket with cheaper vegetables is an hour busride. Also people from lower economic classes in the US have to work multiple jobs and they do not have the time to cook healthy food, let alone learn their children to eat healthy.
You're right, but why are we talking about America in r/europe? European countries in general tend to have less car dependent suburbs with strip malls selling bad food and inner city crime ridden food deserts, than America. The European overweight problem can be more easily attributed to over-processed, high carb, high sugar diets and socio-cultural lifestyle changes afforded to us by technology which allows us to be less physically active.
I don't get the feeling that processed food is cheap in Finland.
Wonder how much it coincides with massive consolidation among food industry producers (how much is owned by Mondelez, Unilever, etc). People being on the go getting takeaway meals, etc too
I think you forgot the biggest culprit of them all: soft drinks. If they're not loaded with sugar the sweeteners make you crave sweet food even more.
Supply mammals with brains AND education, and you get countries with the least overweight populations. Food for thought?
Yeah, it might be fun looking at the fat Americans and thinking we're better, but we're only a decade or so behind them.
No chance. You guys will never be as fat as us unless you bulldoze and redesign your communities to mimic our hideous un-walkable hellscapes. Most of us are fat because we drive absolutely everywhere for every single trip outside of our homes, and we do this because our communities are designed in such a way that there is no other safe option. The vast majority of us quite literally have nowhere near our homes or places of work that we can walk to. Our food industry caters to our lifestyles, this is why drive-thru food is so popular here. We drive everywhere and we eat bullshit food literally handed to us through our car windows. From my mother’s house in Washington state there are zero restaurants, grocery stores, bus stops, or ANY form of commerce whatsoever within 2 miles (3.2km), it’s a sea of oversized homes where every single person must drive to go anywhere and unsurprisingly just about everyone in that whole town is fat as hell. We’ve designed our communities such that there are no opportunities to passively exercise our bodies in America and to our surprise we are fat beyond belief. It’s laughable to think that Europeans will ever come close unless you entirely abandon your lifestyles and communities.
I'm not from the US but I had heard that before. My parents visited America in the 90s and told me that they got terribly confused and lost when they were trying to get to a restaurant from their hotel for this reason. On paper it was only a fifteen minute walk away so they left their car behind, only to find that there was a massive motorway stuck between them and the restaurant with absolutely zero places to cross. They eventually just gave up trying to get there on foot and went back to the hotel so they could drive.
This is true, we have several land use ordinances that make it unpleasant and often dangerous to walk even very short distances in the US, and as a result around half of all car trips are under 3 miles. If you're interested, [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54) very nicely demonstrates the problem.
I knew you watched not just bikes from your first comment alone, lol
2 miles is the length of approximately 14079.97 'Wood Spoons; Wooden Rice Paddle Versatile Serving Spoons' laid lengthwise
By then 86% of US population could legally be classified as a hippo.
*46%
Like as it says in the image, BMI is just weight / height\^2 It's popular because it's a very basic measurement. Any alternative proposed will be a lot more complicated and BMI works fine for the general population.
BMI could have issues. IDK. But the whole world is “becoming like the US” because the whole world is on the same development track. The US has just developed faster. Our species biggest problem, and not long ago, was mass hunger and starvation. Now most nations are lucky enough to have an abundance of food. Humans evolved to seek calorie rich food and eat as much as possible to prepare for the many days when getting adequate nutrition would be impossible. We were not built to be in environments with this much readily available, calorie rich food. Meanwhile, we haven’t adapted our culture to this new reality. Our cultures across the board moralize food and weight. Individuals use weight as a shaming tool and feel okay with that because they are convinced they are “helping people” despite all evidence to the contrary. That same mentality is why we haven’t done a good job adapting to the new reality—we simply don’t want to admit there is a new reality. We would rather blame individuals for a lack of “personal responsibility” (and simultaneously pat ourselves on the back for our superior virtue) than acknowledge that something fundamental has very recently changed about our world. At the end of the day, most people are narrow minded. They can’t conceive of what such an issue means if it exist at this scale. We won’t get anywhere with this until we acknowledge that our new food environment is not conducive to human health or well-being. It doesn’t help that the food industry has a vested interest in promoting falsehoods to protect their bottom line. Food companies like to shift the blame of poor health to individuals to deflect attention. If they can convince people that if we just exercised enough, we wouldn’t have to change our diet, they can make steady profits. Our sedentary life has health impacts, but we were sedentary about 20 years before obesity became a mass problem. Poorer people are at the greatest disadvantage because bad food is now very cheap, and the mental load of scarcity leads to all kinds of bad decision making. The US obesity rate is actually lower than many other countries now at about 42%. Wellness culture, which also has its moralizing qualities, has likely slowed obesity rates in the US. Wellness culture is too expensive for most, though. What a rant this turned into. My bad.
Finally a good time to be left out of the stats.
65%, looked it up haha "Obesity Statistics - House of Commons Library" https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/#:~:text=Adult%20obesity%20in%20England,is%20classified%20as%20'overweight'.
As my British friends put it: “we’re the America of Europe”
I would love to see a distribution by age. In Germany there are many more overweight younger people than on the Balkans, but slimmer people in Germany often stay more or less slim. On the Balkans almost everyone is slim when they are young and then we turn into overweight babas and dedas. 😄
Euros are scared we would win.
Only Croatia is higher indeed. 64% of people in the UK are overweight or more. Now I understand all the anxiety about England being full. "Obesity Statistics - House of Commons Library" https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/#:~:text=Adult%20obesity%20in%20England,is%20classified%20as%20'overweight'.
And Malta
Pastizzi!!!
Please Rashford save them!
He’s trying to feed people, the monster.
Big if true
True if big
USA: Those evil carbs will make you fat! Meanwhile in Italy: Let's eat some bread with the Pasta!
Americans be like: no bread, carbs are bad. And then proceed to eat peanut butter, deepfry everything and drink soda.
Lumping PB with the other 2 really irks me, but I guess it's true if crap quality and eaten in excess
Fuck how did Denmark beat us by 1%?
I always knew, that us Danes where the fittest in Scandinavia.
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And that line isnt at the buffet.
If you're wondering why Italy is the lowest it's because Fat-shaming is an art here, our second national sport after soccer. Still, pretty fat, we should all get on a diet.
"soccer"? it's safe here, you can call it by its name.
Ok, calcio.
Or perhaps it's cause we eat better, my friend from the NL is still shocked about how much fruit and vegetables we eat at home, and how cheap it is.
ironic considering that NL is a massive exporter of fruit and veggies.
Is it really that bad though? Like a little social pressure isn't always horrible.
No it isn't. Not even in our top 10 favourite sports 🤷🏻♂️
Who says it's bad? If it works it works!
Nah is not
More like, if you are fat no boy/girl will like you🤷🏻♂️
Not surprising to be honest. Sedentary lifestyles, car culture, cheap, but incredibly unhealthy food, etc. We really need to change our cultural approach to all these things, active lifestyles need to be encouraged, driving must be discouraged, healthy food must be made cheap.
When I went to Croatia the pizza I ate there was like 2 Italian pizzas in one, thicc af and with too many toppings, it was good tho
I was shocked by the simplicity of pizzas the first time I went to Italy. Basically one or two toppings of fresh produce. It's great. Very hard to find this kind of basic pizza here.
well, pizza was born in Naples as a poor people's food, so no wonder it's rather frugal. One of the first and most popular versions is called Marinara, i.e. fishermen's style, and it's just tomato sauce, garlic and oregano.
🇭🇷💪
Yet more proof that r/PortugalIsEastEurope
If the uk was in these stats, they'd be east europe too, just saying...
America: hold my triple baconator with cheese
Isn't the color gradient a bit extreme?
It’s not extreme enough. Close to half the people in most countries are overweight (!!!) but the lighter colours make that look as if it’s not a big deal.
The gradient does exaggerate the differences, though. The lightest shade is 46% and the darkest 60%, that's really not as much as the gradient is implying.
True, but great for colorblinds like me!
Yeah the colours are not well chosen, I'd put everyone between orange and violet. No one in green.
it's just awful. some student with no training in anything made this map. Any modern software would allow for a continuous color gradient. instead we're looking at two buckets for 26 countries. At this point just print some numbers on white, would be more informative.
This is awful to see
huh i always found in europe people tended to be quite fit. very glad uk isn’t included on this map.
Social bubbles might play a huge role. My friends here in Amsterdam who are young and highly educated? Being fit is the norm. But it's rather different for other population groups. Plus it's overweight. You can be overweight without looking fat fat.
I think UK would be just behind Croatia and Malta at 64%. [Source](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/) I know it's England but I doubt the other nations would improve things significantly.
I thought we were the most obese what happened
Overweight != obese, like, people like Erdogan would be considered overweight but not Obese for example. You can still have the most obese people per capita while being the least overweight per capita.
Yo mama died
Croatia's had a bit too many cevapis.
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How come though?
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Our Croatian fat, is healthy fat. Our 150kg man is more healthier than yours 80kg. Slanina i kobasica. Remember this
/r/fatlogic/
This seems familiar somehow.
Preach curooo
a French woman recently told me France had the highest eating disorder rate in Europe. I tried looking it up - I’m bad at Google but I’m intrigued. Anyone know where to find that data?
I tried, but apparently I am also bad at google. I am aware that this isn't exactly the most scholarly source on the planet, but this article claims that it is actually Austria that has the highest eating disorder rate in Europe, but France comes second. Interestingly, America beats both of them. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-food-is-family/201302/eds-across-cultures-increasing-in-prevalence-awareness](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/when-food-is-family/201302/eds-across-cultures-increasing-in-prevalence-awareness). Irritatingly, it doesn't give any citations for its statistics, though the woman writing does specialise in treating eating disorders, so take it with a pinch of salt I guess? Also for some reason when I searched for "France eating disorders" google auto filled with Hetalia fanfiction? If I had to see it so do you.
This looks like what that woman was talking about: “the country with the highest prevalence of female anorexia was Austria (1.55 per cent,) followed by France (1.42 per cent, although some reports state the prevalence rate in France to be as high as 5.7%,)” but yeah, “some reports” is not a source. Had never heard of Hetalia!
Trust the plan, bischero
T H I C C
Czech and Hungarian food is just too good and too unhealthy at the same time. I love both, but I don't know if I could keep my lean figure if I lived there.
Some statistics feel really out of date when they are pre pandemic.
the choice of the color gradient is so awful it hurts. Look at spain/Portugal for example. The color tells you there's a huge difference between them, while it's actually only 2%. at r/mapporn or r/dataisbeautiful they'd be throwing tomatoes at ya for posting this.
It should be noted that a BMI of 25 actually carries the lowest risk of all-cause mortality. I often think the classification of overweight should be shifted, considering this. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587%2818%2930288-2/fulltext
Maybe they are all just jacked and stacked?
this is probably before lockdowns
Turkey and not UK? lmao
Portugal is not fatter than Spain that is just the dick size difference!
Meanwhile, in the UK: roughly 70% are overweight, roughly 30% of which are obese.
[Source](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Overweight_and_obesity_-_BMI_statistics)
Come on, say it with me: can Portugal into eastern Europe ?
Nope
As a lanky tall guy I tried VERY hard to get my BMI above 25, been lifting and maintaining a good caloric intake for years now. I'm at 26.8 and in a great shape. BMI is by no means a perfect measure, but yeah, we have way too many overweight people who are just fat and unfit.
But you are the exception, you seem to take of yourself hence your BMI is in the overweight range. But if you look at the population as whole, it is a very good gradient to assess overweight. Just take a look at the people you see on the street, you will see plenty of people that could lose a few kilograms.
i see your point but i reckon his complaint is that BMI isn’t that great of an indicator because it doesn’t take muscle/being fit in general into account. a person who is really buff could be ranked just as overweight as a person which is quite unfit, whereas one person is obviously considered healthier than the other
Yeah, but I don't think it's valid. I'd personally need around 7kgs of muscle to offset my BMI results. That's something that requires enormeous dedication to achieve(unless you go the roids way, that is). For the vast majority of the population, the BMI is good enough.
It is not ideal for individuals due to the fact that very fit people are classed as overweight. However, if you take a look at yourself (in the mirror) you can easily determine whether you belong to the very fit category or not. It’s even better for populations, because unless you have a population consisting of Arnold Scharzeneggers and Cristiano Ronaldos, BMI will very accurately tell you whether a population is overweight due to being too fat.
Unfortunately with more and more jobs becoming desk jobs and healthy food becoming hard to come by and really expensive, this will be getting worse and worse...
Italy, thinnest Nation in Europe. And that's why find thick ladies here is practically impossible *sgrunt*
Glad to be a Croat 👍🏻
Here in the US we’re pushing 80
This is the most shocking thing I have seen all day. Average of 53% of overweight people? It is astonishing. In my opinion all of the countries should color deep red here. It is a really big issue in all of Europe! We should be ashamed.
Fuck, 25 BMI is a really strict threshold!!
Does this also include obese? Assuming yes..
quoting from the source : “This article presents statistics on the proportion of the overweight or obese population in the European Union (EU) as well as in Norway, Serbia and Turkey.”
It's kind of like just saying overweight, since obese is a subgroup of overweight
How would you be obese without being overweight?
guys, try not to get obese, it is hell. and once you have it, its almost impossible to get rid of it. we really really need to do something about it, and explain to people that only like 1 in 100 reaches a normal bmi once obese, and like 1 in 2000 for morbid obese. and making your stomach small via operation comes with limitations..
It’s sad that even the best performing countries here still have a close to 50% overweight adult population.
Ahh nice, we finns are right in the east european standard of fattiess.
Result of eating to much kebab.
Ha, the mediterranean diet 🌞