Approximately one in six adults living in the European Union are obese, a new survey reveals. The data also show that obesity rates increase with age and lower educational attainment.

Overall, 15.9% of adults living in the European Union were found to be obese (body mass index [BMI] 30 kg/m² or higher) while 35.7% were preobese (BMI 25 kg/m² – < 30 kg/m²), 46.1% had a normal weight (BMI 18.5 kg/m² – < 25 kg/m²) and 2.3% were classified as underweight (BMI < 18.5 kg/m²).

The results were published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, on October 20.

Approached for comment, Hermann Toplak, MD, president of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and a specialist in endocrinology and metabolism at the University of Graz, Austria, likened the growth in obesity to a tsunami that “comes steadily and bears considerable consequences, especially in the long term.”

He added: “High caloric intake and lack of physical exercise in a world with elevators, escalators, and travelators, cars and other ‘facilitators’ have become an almost worldwide phenomenon. Psychosocial stress is exaggerating the problem, making us unable to resist the 24-hour availability of healthy and unhealthy food.”

Despite cultural differences, Dr Toplak said that the trend “is the same everywhere: loss of muscle mass and gain of fat mass.”

He continued: “About 10 years ago, the percentage of people with obesity was about 10% to 14% in most European regions; now it is [nearing] 16%, with a deterioration of health leading to increases in diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, and stroke, as well as cancer and much more.

“Altogether, that will become harder to finance, life expectancy will go down, and, especially, life quality will deteriorate considerably.”

The data for the report come from two waves of the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), which measures the health status and health determinants. The first wave was conducted between 2006 and 2009; the second was conducted between 2013 and 2015. The survey includes participants from all of the EU countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The current analysis focuses on adults aged 18 to 74 years living in private households and residing in the territory of each country.

The lowest proportion of adults who were obese was recorded in Romania (9.4%) and Italy (13.3%), followed by the Netherlands (13.3%), Belgium, and Sweden (both 14.0%). The highest prevalence of obesity was seen in Malta (26.0%), Latvia (21.3%), Hungary (21.2%), Estonia (20.4%), and the United Kingdom (20.1%).

There were no overall differences in the prevalence of obesity between men and women, at 16.1% and 15.7% at the EU level. However, there were within-country differences. For example, the proportion of men who were obese was higher than that for women in Malta (+4.2%), Croatia (+3.9%), Slovenia (+3.6%), and Cyprus (+3.4%). The proportion of women who were obese was higher than that for men in Lithuania (+5.8%), Latvia (+4.4%), and the Netherlands (+3.6%).

There was, however, an overall increase in the prevalence of obesity with age. Comparing the prevalence between people aged 18 to 24 years with those aged 65 to 74 years revealed that the difference at EU level was 5.7% vs 22.1%.

On an individual-country basis, the largest difference in obesity levels between older and younger adults were seen in Slovakia (+30.3%), Latvia (+29.3%) and Estonia (+26.4%), with Lithuania (+25.3%), Poland (+25.1%), and the Czech Republic and Hungary (both +24.5%) not far behind.

The proportion of people who were obese decreased with increasing education. On the EU level, there was an 8.4% difference in the prevalence of obesity between high-education-level and low-education-level adults, at 11.5% vs 19.9%.

In terms of individual countries, the difference in the prevalence of obesity between high-education and low-education level was -16.8% in Slovenia, -14.5% in Luxembourg, -13.9% in Slovakia, -13.0% in Spain, -12.3% in Croatia and Portugal, and -12.1% in France.

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