I’ve got some good news and some bad news. First, the good news; according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in the highly coveted world competition among developed countries to see which nation is the most obese, the world-class leader is once again (drum roll please),….the United States of America! Our entire country is 30.6 percent obese, which just crushes second place Mexico, trailing us at a paltry 24.2 percent. Mexico is 4 to 5 percent fatter than they were last year and they still couldn’t keep up with us! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Now for the bad news; even though there are 1.6 billion overweight and obese people in the entire world, we’re only number one in obese individuals–not overweight ones. There is a difference between overweight and obese. To be overweight you must have a Body Mass Index over 25. To be considered obese your BMI has to be over 30 and morbid obesity is over 40. The rest of the world can’t match our BMIs over 30 and 40, but when it comes to the over 25 BMI group–the merely ‘overweight’–we come in a pathetic ninth place.
I know. It’s a hard pill to swallow. Even if you wrap it in bacon and pour sugar on it. Only 74.1 percent of our nation is overweight compared to 94.5 percent of the country of Nauru, which is the world’s smallest island nation with a population under 100,000. Man, they smoked us! How can their Mango Papaya Sherbet and Coconut Crusted Fish compete with our Krispy Kremes and Quarter Pounders?
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