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[Zasa]

God damn, Chile, that bread & empanada diet though. Put the marraqueta down people!

 

[samn]

Nothing will change unless there is a huge crackdown on junk food corporations and retailers. This will never happen due to a combination of lobbying and an attachment to 'personal choice' in a marketplace where eating well is made the most difficult option.

 

[brawly]

Eating at McDonald's isn't the problem. It's ordering a 2000 piece chicken nugget meal and a tub of fries. The cheap cost of the food encourages people to buy way too much of it. A burger every so often isn't going to hurt you.

Hence why I said "every day".

 

[ClosingADoor]

Stop drinking soda and other crap. Cut down on the portion sizes.

And good luck with paying for the associated extra healthcare costs with this.

I'll never understand how so many people can let it come that far, outside of those with actual diseases they can't help. There's a real problem in your society if so many people get that fat.

 

[Betty]

You guys have way too many bad choices.

Like your pop tarts, here in the UK it's chocolate, apple or cinnamon to choose from.

But with you there's things like hot fudge sundae flavor, marshmallow hot chocolate, maple bacon, etc and that's just breakfast!

 

[Hoo-doo]

Multiple times a week? Try multiple times a day lol

That's just unfathomable to me.
Yeah, it's not weird that you're going to put on weight when you're eating 800+ kcal sandwiches for lunch and a 1300+ kcal dinner every day.

I mean, a single large domino's pizza can hit around 2000kcal. It's monstrous.

 

[veryslowhand]

I'd assume you'd have to be pretty fat.

above 30 bmi, that is fat but not crazy fat

 

[samn]

You guys have way too many bad choices.

Like your pop tarts, here in the UK it's chocolate, apple or cinnamon to choose from.

But with you there's things like hot fudge sundae flavor, marshmallow hot chocolate, maple bacon, etc and that's just breakfast!

The UK is awful as well. Well over 50% of any local/convenience shop is stocked with crap. Cakes, chocs, sweets, pastries, frozen pizzas, chips, booze.

 

[Wollan]

Norway doing good despite competing​ for top spot within living standards. A mountain loving people, dining out is (unfortunately) outrageously expensive but thankfully supermarkets don't yet have the tempting super-cheap&super-high-calorie options seen elsewhere.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

Politicians like talking about healthcare, They dont like talking about americans poisoning themselves and their children....which probably doesnt help with healthcare costs. Who the hell does Michelle Obama think she is telling our children what to eat!

 

[Hoo-doo]

above 30 bmi, that is fat but not crazy fat

Whether you personally feel it's 'crazy fat' or not is irrelevant. It's obese, plain and simple.

But this is a nice example of standards changing over time. In 15 years a BMI of 30 will be the 'average' bodytype in the United States.

 

[RM8]

How is Italy so low on the list?!? They eat unimaginable amounts of pasta every day.

And look at those Asian countries that eat tons of rice. And France, with their love for bread. Carbs are not the problem, I think.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

It just seems dubious that more than 1/3 of the population is obese.

Have you been outside lately?

 

[SeanR1221]

This report is so sad :/

Obesity really will become the new normal

 

[Neidii]

I'm surprised Sweden was so high up, over 12%, I rarely see big people here. Eating out is horribly expensive imo, it's cheaper to make food at home so that helps a lot in eating healthy.

 

[Won]

It's always easier to point the finger and blame someone else than taking a look in the mirror, but at this scale I hope governments start to crack down on this shit soon and fast.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

You guys have way too many bad choices.

Like your pop tarts, here in the UK it's chocolate, apple or cinnamon to choose from.

But with you there's things like hot fudge sundae flavor, marshmallow hot chocolate, maple bacon, etc and that's just breakfast!

1) basically every poptart in the world is 200 calories
2) poptarts are not breakfast anyway...

 

[Wollan]

Also not surprised about France being low on the list. I visit often and it's a big contrast to the UK.

 

[veryslowhand]

Whether you personally feel it's 'crazy fat' or not is irrelevant. It's obese, plain and simple.

But this is a nice example of standards changing over time. In 15 years a BMI of 30 will be the 'average' bodytype in the United States.

didnt mean to offend with the crazy fat thing, just saying that most of the people that you would simply qualify as fat are medically obese, a 30 bmi is being 5 10 and 210.

 

[SolarPowered]

USA is #1! USA is #1!!

Suck it,world!

Mexico thought they had us, but we pulled way ahead in the end. Anything less than 100% obesity is weak.

 

[Escape Goat]

I was hoping wed all be fitness models after the elimination of the super size upgrade and transfer fat.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat. I've found that I can eat whatever I want and however much of it I want as long as I'm getting a commensurate amount of exercise.

 

[Aureon]

Italian food is actually very healthy (and no they don't eat pasta and pizza all day)

Italian diet absolutely includes pasta as one meal out of two.
However, it's 80-120g of pasta with about as much sauce ('Sugo', or tomato sauce, being the staplest of the staples)

Less eating out definitely helps.
(I know like three obese people in all in Rome. I barely qualify (30.2 BMI), but i'm struggling with tyrhoiditis + a heart condition that prevents me from exercising, so being a lazy motherfucker, i got fat. But 'fat' in italy starts at 24BMI or so, so getting to 30 is actually pretty rare)

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat.

Walking 10km every day nets out 700cal or so.
And 10km is 25k paces or so, nothing to sneeze at - 700cal is pretty fucking easy to eat back.
Exercise helps, but it's mostly about other areas of health than just losing fat.

 

[psaman17]

And look at those Asian countries that eat tons of rice. And France, with their love for bread. Carbs are not the problem, I think.

Its the soda and the processed cheese that is the main culprit i imagine. Everytime i eat cheap fast food laced with cheese i feel like crap. There are people that eat this shit everyday.

 

[Fleet_of_Foot]

You guys have way too many bad choices.

Like your pop tarts, here in the UK it's chocolate, apple or cinnamon to choose from.

But with you there's things like hot fudge sundae flavor, marshmallow hot chocolate, maple bacon, etc and that's just breakfast!

Wait, are you suggesting that chocolate Pop Tarts are a good choice?

Without actually checking, I bet all Pop Tarts have generally the same amount of calories. And absolutely nothing of nutritional value to offer a human body.

 

[TatteredHat]

Man, what the heck are you guys doing over there.

 

[SkeptiMism]

Why is Finland so high up when the rest of Scandinavia is doing ok?

Yeah noticed that too immediately. Weird.

 

[SeanR1221]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat.

It's most certainly the food.

You can lose weight easily and barely be active.

Exercise has many benefits. Burning calories is one of the lesser ones.

 

[nel e nel]

Insulin resistance is a real bitch.

I do wonder if it's going to hit a point where we see strong government regulation to try to right things. I can't imagine the vast majority of Americans being okay with that, but at the same time I don't understand how obesity of 45+% could be sustainable. The national health care costs alone would be absurd.

OECD seems to mostly be pushing consumer education and similar policies, but I have no confidence of that working in any real way. At least in the US, obesity has been a well-publicized problem for decades, and despite lots and lots of education it's only gotten considerably worse. (I personally have a lot of problems with much of this education -- particularly the focus on total calories and reducing fat consumption -- and think a lot of that has only increased the problem, but it still demonstrates it's not an issue of the public not caring.)

Obviously nothing positive is going to happen in the US under our current government. I guess we'll see where things stand in ten years.

Look up Mike Bloomberg's attempt to regulate soda in NYC.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_Drinks_Portion_Cap_Rule

People were willing to kill for their Big Gulps.

 

[Maximo]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat.

I mean...food is obviously a big factor especially considering the shit that is put into American foods, everything tastes like sugar or salt.

 

[Zacagawea]

Man, what the heck are you guys doing over there.

Eating

 

[Mendrox]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat.

It is the portions in America. Friend of mine who lives there three years always complains about the big portion sizes and that it is difficult to buy more healthy food for cheap in America. As soon as she travels back to Germany she immediately slims down without even doing anything. Also all that Soda the people drink there and eating fast food for breakfast haha

People also dont know what being obese is anymore. They think it is having to buy two seats in a cinema etc but it is not. Surely they think not seeing your belly button is normal too

 

[Woo-Fu]

I mean...food is obviously a big factor especially considering the shit that is put into American foods, everything tastes like sugar or salt.

Sounds like a generalization to me. There is plenty of healthy food to be had. It doesn't matter how "good" the food is for you if you eat more than you burn. Caloric intake isn't exactly rocket science. In either case, though, it still comes down to lifestyle choice. Either as you think they're choosing to eat the wrong things or as I think they're eating too much while exercising too little, still a choice.

 

[Escape Goat]

Eating

 

[ClosingADoor]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat. I've found that I can eat whatever I want and however much of it I want as long as I'm getting a commensurate amount of exercise.

It's the food combined with that. The amount of unhealthy food they eat in some countries is not good. Then all the damn soda being drunk by the liter.

Of course if you then go to the gym and workout a few hours every day, that isn't a very large problem. But nobody can do that because of work and otherwise probably wouldn't want to anyway.

So cutting down on the food is the best thing for most people to do.

 

[TatteredHat]

Eating

Well there's your problem then.

But really it's a combination of eating shit and not exercising, however what you eat has a lot more impact on your weight than exercise itself. You can exercise all you want but if you continue to eat junk / start eating more junk you will not lose weight. 90% of weightloss happens in the kitchen.

If you want to lose weight then stop eating junk food, stop drinking sugary soda, and control your portions.

 

[slit]

Right, but you try getting in to whichever government on a platform of mandatory rationing.

Really, it's a sensible option for a lot of reasons, even beyond the out of control weight situation, but it's not an easy sell.

Not only is it not an easy sell, it's damn near impossible. You're never going to logistically be able to enforce that. Food is everywhere and the need for it varies from area to area and person to person.

 

[brawly]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat. I've found that I can eat whatever I want and however much of it I want as long as I'm getting a commensurate amount of exercise.

You can lose weight just sitting on your ass all day.

 

[siddx]

Have you been outside lately?

I don't live in the US but I was there recently and the idea that 38% is obese is hard to believe to me. But, I always considered obese to be fat to the point it hampers movement and ability to exercise. As in 300+ pounds. But apparently my perception is incorrect and obese is a wider spectrum.

In the end who am I to judge though. I work out 5 times a week, I cut most sugar from my diet, and I am active during the day. Yet I'm still fat. So I ain't going to judge others for struggling with their weight unless they aren't doing shit about it.

 

[ClosingADoor]

Not only is it not an easy sell, it's damn near impossible. You're never going to logistically be able to enforce that. Food is everywhere and the need for it varies from area to area and person to person.

Tax the shit out of fast food and soda, use it for subsidies for fruit and vegetables. It isn't that hard. Put people will probably start a riot over it.

 

[giga]

didnt mean to offend with the crazy fat thing, just saying that most of the people that you would simply qualify as fat are medically obese, a 30 bmi is being 5 10 and 210.

Sounds a about right.

 

[slit]

Tax the shit out of fast food and soda, use it for subsidies for fruit and vegetables. It isn't that hard. Put people will probably start a riot over it.

That isn't rationing which is what I was responding to.

 

[milanbaros]

I'm always surprised to see the UK so high up the list, when I moved to London a couple of years back I was expecting to be surrounded by obese people, but that's really not the case at all (and I would have noticed, since the region of Italy I'm from has like a 8% obesity rate.
Are all the fatties living elsewhere in the UK or something.

Also interesting how the most obese countries tend to be English speaking.

Yes, they are elsewhere. London population skews younger, better educated and higher income than rest of the U.K.

Go to the northern towns to get your fill of fatties.

 

[Costa Kid]

Zero surprise when you look at any fast food topic on Neogaf

Americans have like 200 different fast food places whereas I've only been to like five in my life lol.

 

[giga]

I don't live in the US but I was there recently and the idea that 38% is obese is hard to believe to me. But, I always considered obese to be fat to the point it hampers movement and ability to exercise. As in 300+ pounds. But apparently my perception is incorrect and obese is a wider spectrum.

In the end who am I to judge though. I work out 5 times a week, I cut most sugar from my diet, and I am active during the day. Yet I'm still fat. So I ain't going to judge others for struggling with their weight unless they aren't doing shit about it.

I grew up and live in the south. I can assure that a third of our population is fat. Especially once you go outside the major cities and into suburbs and rural areas.

 

[whatsinaname]

Interesting how many people are blaming the food. It isn't the food, it is the sedentary lifestyle, at least from what I've seen. Go to work, sit at a desk all day, come home, sit on the couch all evening, go to bed, repeat. I've found that I can eat whatever I want and however much of it I want as long as I'm getting a commensurate amount of exercise.

That "eat however much" is calibration is clearly skewed for the majority. It's the food that is the problem for most people. There been a normalization of high calorie and size meals. When the cookie at your local coffee shop is 400 calories and the average coffee people consume seems to have 400 calories, no amount of exercise is going to compensate for that.

 

[i-Lo]

Taste buds -> free market -> cheap unhealthy food -> obesity -> fat acceptance

It's only going to get worse.

 

[Sinfamy]

Body positivity movements are only perpetuating this sickness.

 

[Alienfan]

The New Zealand government could start by subsidizing fruit and vegetables instead of subsidizing milk and meat

 

[digdug2k]

Obese seems to be the new normal over there. We're fast approaching the Wall-E future.

Obese people don't look like walle, or the guy in that chart. They look about like this guy.