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Maltese fattest in EU

Xinhua, October 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

Maltese has been confirmed as the most obese in the European Union(EU), an online report issued by Eurostat on Thursday showed.

Nearly one in every six persons aged 18 or over in the EU was obese in 2014. More than one in four adults in Malta (26 percent) was considered obese, followed by about one in five in Latvia (21.3 percent), Hungary (21.2 percent), Estonia (20.4 percent) and the UK (20.1 percent).

Among the EU Member States for which data are available, the lowest shares of adult obesity in 2014 were recorded in Romania (9.4 percent) and Italy (10.7 percent), ahead of the Netherlands(13.3 percent), Belgium and Sweden (both 14.0 percent).

These information emerged in the European Health Interview Survey which is issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU.

While 46.1 percent of adults living in the EU had a normal weight in 2014, slightly more than half of the adults (51.6 percent) were considered as over-weight (35.7 percent pre-obese and 15.9 percent obese) and a further 2.3 percent as under-weight.

The share of obese adults clearly varies between age groups and according to education level. With the exception of those aged 75 or over, the older the age group, the higher the share of obese persons: the obesity share in the EU stood at 22.1 percent for people aged 65 to 74, while it was 5.7 percent for those aged 18 to 24. In Malta, about one young adult out of 10(12.0 percent) was considered obese and about one in three older persons (33.6 percent).

The pattern is also clear for education level: the proportion of obese persons in the EU falls as the educational level rises. Indeed, while the percentage of obese persons among those with low education level reached 19.9 percent, it decreased to 16.0 percent for those with a medium education level and to 11.5 percent for the population with a high education level.

Although no systematic difference in obesity levels between men and women was recorded, the proportion of obesity was higher for men in half of the EU states, and higher for women in the other half.

At EU level, the share of obesity was almost equal in 2014 between men (16.1 percent) and women (15.7 percent).In Malta, the proportion of obese men is much higher than that of women (28.1 percent for men compared with 23.9 percent for women). Enditem