NEWYORK (Pacnews) — Forbes has published its World’s Fattest Country list and while it has been reported over and over that Americans are getter bigger every year, the alarming news is the world is following suit.
In the latest Forbes list of the countries with the greatest percentage of overweight people, Nauru is tops with the greatest percentage of overweight people, with an alarming 94.5 percent of its adult population (ages 15+) classified as such, based on the most recent estimates by the World Health Organization.
The Federated States of Micronesia, Cook Islands, Tonga and Niue round out the top five, all with a portly population of over 90 percent.
Samoa is at number 7, Palau at no. 8, Kiribati at no. 10 , Vanuatu no. 47, Tuvalu 55, Fiji 68, Marshall Islands 105, Solomon Islands 115 and Papua New Guinea 145.
Experts blame “Western ways of life” including fast food choices, little or no exercise and stressful employment.
“Due to urbanization, more people are living in more dense environments, in cities where they are removed from traditional food sources and dependent on an industrial food supply,” said Neville Rigby, director of policy and public affairs for the International Association for the Study of Obesity.
“Obesity has become a problem of poverty,” said Daniel Epstein of the WHO Regional Office of the Americas. “Poor people have an easier time of eating junk food. People fill up on things that have a high caloric value but little nutritional value.”
Dr. Frank Hu, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, agrees.
“The problems of obesity rates dramatically increase in countries that are undergoing economical development,” he said
Rural workers moving to urban areas perform less physical labor and supplant traditional low-fat diets that include local goods with processed diets that are high in fat and sugar.
There are 1.6 billion overweight adults in the world. In just 10 years, the WHO projects that number will grow by 40 percent.