Overweight : Overweight - Occurrence

Prevalence of overweight and obesity varies widely within the EU

The proportion of adults who are obese in the EU-25 ranges from less than 10% in Italian women to more than 25% in Czech women. The proportion of adults who are overweight ranges from 23.3% of French women to 53% of German men (see Table

Prevalence of overweight and obesity in European countries). In all EU-countries the prevalence of overweight is higher among men than among women. In most countries obesity is more frequently present among women than among men. No gradient in the prevalence of overweight can be distinguished.

Prevalence rates of overweight and obesity in populations are often obtained in samples with different age distributions and in different time periods. Precisely comparable prevalence rates are rare, and international comparisons should be interpreted with caution.

The ISARE project has collected data on obesity at subnational level. These data ar shown in Map Prevalence of obesity in selected ISARE health regions.

Number of overweight people has increased in the EU

The percentage of people with overweight or obesity has increased in the EU, as well as in the rest of the world. The WHO talks of the "global epidemic of obesity" (WHO, 2003b). Trend data suggest an increase in obesity rates in almost all countries. Even in those countries with relatively low rates of obesity, such as France and Denmark, there is clear evidence of an increase. In France, obesity in women rose from 8% to 13% while in men it rose from 8.4% to 11.8% between 1997 and 2006 (self reported data). In the Netherlands obesity among men rose from 4.9% to 8.5%, while for women it went from 6.2% to 9.3% from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s (measured data). In the UK (England), the annual health survey has recorded dramatic increases in measured obesity from 13% to 22.7% in men and 16% to 23.8% in women, in just 10 years, until 2004. This compares with an obesity prevalence of 6-7% in 1980 (IOTF, 2005b).

Childhood obesity is turning into an epidemic

Childhood obesity is already an epidemic in some European countries and on the rise in others (WHO, 2003b). In 2004 it was estimated that 14 million school-age children in the EU were overweight, including three million obese children. These estimates were made using the IOTF standard definition for international data comparisons (IOTF, 2004).
Recently, two papers on overweight and obesity prevalence in European children have been published, involving at least 10 countries (Lobstein & Frelut, 2003; Lissau et al., 2004). The findings of these studies and differences in data collection used are described in details

Papers on childhood overweight.

Childhood obesity epidemic is worsening

Most publications on childhood obesity agree that the epidemic of childhood obesity and overweight is accelerating. An analysis of survey data conducted throughout Europe since the mid-1970s, reveals a rapid shift in the trend during the mid-1990s (IOTF, 2006). The number of children affected by overweight and obesity is now rising at more than 400,000 a year and already affects almost one in four across the entire EU. The new prevalence of 24% in 2002 is five points higher than had been expected based on original trends in the 1980s and is already higher than the predicted peak for 2010 (IOTF, 2006).

There is a clear socio-economic gradient in most EU-countries

In many EU-countries there is a clear socio-economic gradient in obesity (Rahkonen et al., 1998; Stam-Moraga et al., 1999; Hulshof et al., 2003; Molarius et al., 2000; Eurothine, 2007). Especially in women, a strong inverse association between obesity and socio-economic status, mostly assessed by educational level, has been reported in many EU countries. This means that obesity among women with lower education levels is more prevalent than among highly educated women.For the WHO-MONICA study, 26 mostly European populations were monitored over a 10-year period (Molarius et al., 2000). Lower education was associated with higher BMI in about half of the male and in almost all of the female populations, and the differences in relative body weight between educational levels increased over the study period (for both, men and women). For women in the MONICA project, the results of the final measures were similar to those in the initial survey (1979-1989). For men, the proportion of population having a significant inverse association increased from 23% in the initial survey to 50% in the final survey. Poland is the only EU country in which a significant positive association was found in one of its regions