This Is the Most Obese Country in the World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 5, 12:45PM EST

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This Is the Most Obese Country in the World — © Cedri / Wikimedia Commons

Obesity, among the most dangerous health conditions, has become an epidemic in America. It can cause heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. Obesity can affect mental health as well, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The most recent CDC report on obesity shows that a stunning 16 states have adult obesity prevalence of or above 35%: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. In Louisiana, the figure is 38.1%, the highest in the country.

Many people assume that the United States has the highest obesity rate among countries. In the developed world, there exists a strong argument that this is true. Among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, America has the worst obesity number. By the OECD estimate, the obesity rate of Americans 15 years or older is 40.0%, ahead of Chile at 34.4% and Mexico at 33.3%. Japan has the lowest rate at 4.2%. The next lowest is South Korea at 5.5%.

Looking through the lens of a much larger group of nations, the United States is not even in the top 10. According to data provided by the Global Obesity Observatory, the American obesity figure is 36.47%. The worldwide data come from a study of just short of 129 million people, and part of the study appeared in the journal Lancet.
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The nation with the highest obesity rate from the Global Obesity Observatory is Nauru, at 59.85%. It is a small country in Micronesia, northwest of Australia. Its population is just shy of 11,000 people. Given its population, Nauru really does not have enough people to make a fair comparison to larger countries.

American Samoa, a U.S. territory with a population of 55,000, may be a more reasonable comparison. The portion of its population that is obese is 58.75%.

These are the most obese nations in the world:

Nauru (59.85%)
American Samoa (58.75%)
Cook Islands (53.97%)
Palau (53.15%)
Marshall Islands (49.85%)
Tahiti (French Polynesia) (48.89%)
Tuvalu (48.47%)
Niue (46.17%)
Kiribati (42.87%)
Tonga (42.72%)
Federated States of Micronesia (41.48%)
Tokelau (41.40%)
Samoa (41.28%)
United States (36.47%)
Kuwait (34.28%)
Qatar (33.46%)
Saudi Arabia (31.73%)
New Zealand (31.07%)
Australia (30.57%)
Canada (30.47%)

Click here to see which is the most obese state in America.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.