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Topics: Health, Food and Drink
Joe Yates
More than a third of the global population is considered to be overweight, but where exactly does the US fit into a ranking of the 'world's fattest countries'?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are more than one billion obese people living on Earth - broken down into 890 million adults and tragically 160 million children, while there's a further 1.84 billion considered overweight.
It's safe to say that the human race, which boasts of a population of eight billion, is going through an obesity crisis.
In America specifically, in 32 years between 1990 and 2022 there has been sharp rise in obesity in the nation.
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Figures for the early '90s put the US 17th on the male international obesity list, with 16.37 percent of men recording a body mass index (BMI) level of at least 30.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the formula used to estimate a patient's BMI is dividing weight in pounds by height in inches squared, then multiplying the result by 703.
A BMI result of between 18.5 and 24.9 is generally considered a healthy weight, although it differs for each individual.
By 2022, 41.92 percent of American men were considered obese - that's an increase from roughly one in six obese men in the US in 1990, to almost two in five two people.
It has meant they've jumped from seven spots up the list to break into the top 10, where the US sits 10th - for male obesity rates.
Meanwhile, American women have jumped 10 spots on the list - although the US does not feature in the top 30 fattest countries in terms of females.
In 1990, one in five women in America were considered obese - 20.5 percent, fast-forward 32 years that figure now stands at 43.8 percent, which equates to two in five women, and 31st in the global female obesity list.
Notably, obesity rates for women in the States were higher than their male counterparts both when the WHO's data was first collated and in 2022 when it was last released.
