A healthy continent? Not quite

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 01/09/05

On radio stations, television networks and in 'fast-food joints' across the US, the phrase 'Fat America' is commonplace.

With US President George W. Bush asking Americans to use his own exercise regime as a model and with lipid-saturated media coverage, most Americans are aware of their collective bulkiness.

In Europe the public's ability to metabolise images of 'Fat America' is admirably efficient.

The proliferation of US fast-food brands throughout Europe, coupled with documentary films like Super Size Me and Eric Schlosser's best-selling book Fast Food Nation, the US has become the archetypal fat nation of the popular imagination.

By contrast Europe is a continent of lean healthy eaters, or so assumptions would like to tell us.

On television, slender Mediterraneans elegantly peck at mozzarella (around 30% saturated fat) with a light drizzling of olive oil (14%).

Meanwhile Scandinavians live on herrings (5%) and rye breads (less than 1%).

But how fat is Europe compared with America and the rest of the world?

According to the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), the lobbying arm of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, while "in many countries there is a 10-15 year lag behind the USA", when it comes to childhood obesity, "European countries are narrowing this gap".

As many as one in five European children are overweight. Among adults the comparisons with the US are even less favourable.

According to the IOTF, the proportion of adults overweight in Finland, Germany Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta all exceeds that in the US, while nine European countries have higher rates overall of obesity.

Whatever the stereotypes of Aphrodite, 38% of Greek women are thought to be obese, more than in the US.

To be sure there are differences within Europe, but not those that might be expected given the trumpeting of the Mediterranean diet.

According to a recent IOTF report presented to the European Commission's 'Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health' (see page 18) overweight and obesity levels among children in Southern Europe are higher than their Northern European counterparts.

"The Mediterranean islands of Malta, Sicily, Gibraltar [sic] and Crete, as well as the countries of Spain, Portugal and Italy report overweight and obesity levels exceeding 30% among children aged seven to 11," says the report.

Levels in England, Ireland and Sweden are lower, although they still fall around the 20% mark.

For seven- to 11-year-olds the largest number of obese and overweight children in the EU is to be found in Malta. Crete tops the table for 13- to 17-year-olds.

At the other end of the scale Dutch children aged between seven and 11 are the leanest, while for children aged between 13 and 17 the best performer is Slovakia.

According to World Health Organisation estimates, there are in excess of one billion overweight adults world-wide. Apart from Europe and the US, obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980 in China, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands and Australasia.

Perhaps it is not just a question of 'Fat America'. Fat, it seems, is a global issue.

Author compares the problem of obesity in the European Union with the situation in the United States