Fat Title moves from United States to Australia

William Atkins
Saturday, 21 June 2008 02:30

Science - Health

The Australian Baker IDI report states that Australians have eaten their way to the less-than-distinquished position of being the fattest major country in the world. However, Americans aren’t much better, now holding down second place.

On Friday, June 20, 2008, the Australian report “Australia’s Future Fat Bomb” by the Melbourne-based Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, was released. The full report (pdf file) can be downloaded from this website, or by linking to the Fat Bomb report.

The Baker report states that 26% of adult Australians are obese (extremely overweight). According to the report, that is 3.9 million out of a total of 15.1 million adults in Australia.

To make matters worse, the report states that another 5.4 million Australians are overweight. When you add up the obese and overweight numbers, it comes to nearly 62% of the Australian adult population above a desirable weight range.

To add even more bad news, the report states that said 70% of men and 60% of women aged 45 to 65 years were technically overweight or obese.

Overweight people are considered those with body to mass index (BMI) ratios of between 25 and 30, while obese people have ratios 30 or greater.

Fin out for yourself what your BMI ratio is from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s “Calculate your Body Mass Index.”

The United States is in second place with 25% of its adults being considered obese.

What did a representative of the Baker Institute say about the number of Australians and Americans that are overweight? Please read on. Additional information on how to solve weight problems are also included later in the article.