According to a recent article in Live Science which was summarized in the National Center for Bicycling and Walking’s online publication, Centerlines, humanity is 17 million tons overweight. That is the equivalent to 34,000,000,000 pounds or another 242 million people!
Sadly, but not surprisingly, the United States is the most overweight nation on the planet. With all our fast food, fried food, super-sized sodas, lack of exercise, and over all couch-potato attitudes, we deserve to be at the top of the heap. The research shows that while North America accounts for just six percent of the world’s population, but 34 percent of its human body mass due to obesity. that is a very sorry statistic.
Here are the lists of the top ten heaviest and lightest nations on the planet. It is noteworthy that half of the top 10 heaviest nation are located in the Middle East, while all ten of the lightest nations are from Asia or Africa. It should also be pointed out that for several of the nations included on the lightest 10 list, the opposite problem from obesity is occurring - instead of too much food (or calories) being consumed, they have too little, which is leading to risks associated with starvation.
Heaviest 10 (for nations with more than 100,000 people):
- United States
- Kuwait
- Croatia
- Qatar
- Egypt
- United Arab Emirates
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Argentina
- Greece
- Bahrain
- North Korea
- Cambodia
- Burundi
- Nepal
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Bangladesh
- Sri Lanka
- Ethiopia
- Vietnam
- Eritrea
The research was detailed online Sunday (June 17) in the journal BMC Public Health.
Rick Brown
