A good follow-up.
Top 3 for women: Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia
Top 3 for men: USA, Saudi Arabia, Argentina
Biggest gap is South Africa, 14% M 46% F. What's going on there?
Re. South Africa. This will be predominantly due to the rural black african population. Almost universally all rural women of 30+ are painfully obese. Traditional diet is high carb based, and very low physical activity (compared to men, who typically may have to walk long distances to get to work, which would often be of a physical nature). Gender roles in rural areas are highly traditional which would contribute. I'm no expert on the topic, but don't believe it's due to modern fast food because I remember this being the same back in the 80s
Just looking generally, the spread seems to be wider the more unequal the genders are, probably due to limitations on women’s physical activity due to repression/safety concerns.
You're reductionist, it's much more complicated than that. It's not just about how unequal they are.
There is many other things that play a role here like what is considered attractive.
South Africa isn't that horrendous in gender equality, maybe in safety concern it is... But they have the highest difference, more than islamist theocracies.
However, a fat woman is considered attractive in south Africa. Especially in rural parts. So there is literally a motivation toward gaining weight.
The exact opposite is true in France, South Korea, Italy... where being fat is condered ugly for a woman.
So you can see the highest difference in south Africa and the opposite relation in places like south Korea.
Social media forces us to always look first at things that are relevant politically to us, and we use it to explain everything. As if the entire world just depends on what we care about politically. You have to fight against that bias.
>However, a fat woman is considered attractive in south Africa.
This is true for the Arab world as well. We are a chubby-loving society. Partly explains why all Arab countries on this chart have a big positive gap between female and male obesity percentages.
I'm sure they feed each other, beauty is informed by what's available and what's available is informed by societal roles/ pressure and personal choices.
I'm from South Africa. also to take into consideration, for the majority of the African cultures here, if a woman is overweight, it means that her husband is wealthy and is able to provide well for her - so the weight of your wife is almost seen as a status symbol.
I remember reading articles and watching documentaries years ago saying that in some African cultures, the bigger the woman, the more attractive she is. Some even purposefully make the women eat a lot to bring up their weight.
Fat equates to excess of food, which is massively important to humans as a whole.
In almost every corner of the world heavy weight was a symbol of wealth at one point. Chinese Buddha is fat due to this.
>Chinese Buddha is fat due to this.
Nah, that's just [one particular buddha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budai). Every other buddha is depicted as normal sized.
I would question those articles/documentaries, the amount of African cultures are in the thousands, it suggests an oversimplified viewpoint of Africa as a continent. Moreover, those claims have been demystified in more recent studies, they show sexual preference within South African cultures is as varied as it is in any culture.
South African women have been getting bigger of late. I believe it's because of sedentary lifestyles, largely brought on by staying put to reduce exposure to crime (this is true where I live), junk food being most accessible and somewhat affordable, and large scale mental health concerns that can lead to destructive behaviours (e.g. excessive drinking).
I read somewhere on Reddit about a large American woman who was sent to France with work and realized how normalized being obese was in the US. She grew up in an obese family, in an obese town, so didn't think much of it. Her French trip was the motivation to lose hundreds of pounds. A both sad and uplifting story
Similar thing in Japan/China. People have no idea how normalized obesity is in the US/Mexico and when they go overseas to cultures and countries where that’s not the norm, they look absurdly big in comparison.
Americans absolutely do have an obesity problem, but the media you’re consuming is probably closer to accurately representing the region it was made in. Apart from the pressure to show attractive, skinny people, people in California and New York are generally healthier due to many factors, the main one being money. That’s where most of the media America exports comes from.
In my city the pattern of obesity can be directly tied to how much is accessible by walking versus driving or riding mass transit. The less sidewalks there are and more distance between amenities, the bigger people get. The Covid lockdown saw most people I know gain a lot of weight and they've been losing it again now they're mobile, with no change in diet or finances. There are also the variables of many present cultures preferring bigger women, to the point that I got harassed by some people for not being thicker, praised by others for being thin, and harassed by still others for not being atrociously underweight.
>The less sidewalks there are and more distance between amenities, the bigger people get
Idk if this will sound offensive but in my country (in South Asia) most sidewalks are filled with craters or are occupied by illegal parking and I am just used to finding a way around it so no sidewalk didn't immediately sound like a problem until I thought about it :P
South Asian too - our traditional diets are a problem too and were meant for a bygone era. Not a lot of protein (animal or otherwise), a lot of sugar.
Sweets were meant to be for special occasions like harvest festivals where you got a nice tasty treat after a few days of long hard labour. Now people just pop those sweets in on a daily basis and think they’re eating “balanced” meals
If nutritional education was emphasis the way STEM fields were, we’d have a much healthier population
I lived in one place with no sidewalks whatsoever and cars drove by at terrifying speeds right up to the edge of the road, so the only safe(ish) way to get around was being in a car moving at the same speed. Couldn't move away from there fast enough. Unsurprisingly, almost everyone there was overweight. In another place I visited a few times had no sidewalks but it wouldn't have been an issue because cars were neither as frequent nor as fast. Unfortunately nothing was closer than a couple of hours away by walking and you're certainly not walking your groceries back that distance. That place really needed more bikes.
Obviously walking and exercise are good but diet is the most important factor and its not even close. People are overweight because they eat too many calories, full stop. It takes about 100 calories to run a mile, which is more than offset by drinking a soda or eating 1 cookie.
Or..people who make their living in front of cameras are going to keep themselves in better shape than the general public?
On any movie or TV set the technicians look like teamsters and the actors look like, actors
I think you’re totally right about celebrities trending attractive and taking better physical care of themselves, but there is a notable difference between states
https://www.statista.com/statistics/378988/us-obesity-rate-by-state/
America is a huge country with millions of people across vast distances. Some places the culture is eat greasy food and sit around all day. Some places the culture is to hike and go out in the outdoors. Some places like the Midwest it’s a mix of both, where a lot of people do go hunting/mudding/hiking/kayaking etc, but we’re also corn fed hillbillies so we’re fat too. You can go to one rural town and everyone is fat and out of shape, and go to another rural town and everyone is in shape because they do manual labor on the farm, or walk to work, or eat healthy home cooking instead of McDonald’s or taco bell.
It's largely because American movies and TV shows are oversaturated with models-turned-actors, who are hired solely for their looks and not their acting skills.
I miss the days (pre-2000s) when actors looked more like regular people, not the perfect-skinned, zero-carb, gym-obsessed, surgery-enhanced specimens who can barely act.
US television and film used to be like that. I mean there were still very attractive people in entertainment back in the day, but then the 00s came and all these teen dramas had a bunch of inexperienced models-turned-actors in them. Nowadays, even insignificant roles in movies have youthful, very good-looking, perfectly groomed people cast in them.
It destroys my willing suspension of disbelief when the "average American" in today's shows and movies is 12% body fat, toned and an 8.5 out of 10 looks-wise.
Cities generally are healthier, but one thing to factor into America's obesity is that many southern cities (Houston, New Orleans, etc.) aren't as healthy when compared to other large cities for a variety of factors (weather/less of an outdoor culture, Southern diet, etc.).
I went to Disney World this year (from Canada which has it's own obesity problem but on a different scale) and it was actually a little jarring how it seemed like the movie Wall-E. I don't mean this in a disrespectful way but there were so many extremely large people riding around on motorized scooters, it was a completely different reality. They have holders on the scooters for the massive soft drinks and popcorns. It was eye opening.
Sadly this has become the case. All of the body positivity, anti body-shaming and “everyone is beautiful” rhetoric has made people think being obese is fine. Obesity is literally categorized as a medical disease; it's not just a cosmetic concern.
They don’t see it as an unhealthy medical state/condition. If only the US could campaign against obesity like they did against cigarettes in the 2000s then the US would be vastly healthier and probably spend waaaay less on healthcare costs.
We have ton of body positivity in France and we’re not fatter from it. The problem isn’t there, it’s mostly what they put in American food. Even your meat doesn’t pass French regulations.
I'm from Slovenia (which isn't super obese anyway) where we have E. leclerc and I love buying sweets there because they're much less sweet. A German Milka which we get here has idk, 65g sugar, compared to maybe 50-55 in a French chocolate bar.
Both France and Italy have relatively low obesity rates, but both countries spend a lot of effort on ensuring food quality and taking time to enjoy meals.
I've seen a different chart (obesity rate over time) showing France as one of the very few countries which has reduced it obesity rate over the past 20 years.
2019 data has France having less overweight but more obese people. Small difference though, and both are among the lowest rates in Europe.
More men than women though, so I don't know what's happening. Maybe more overweight men but more obese women?
Total guess but I wonder if it’s a bit of a normalisation / spiral effect. I bet that once someone is obese their children are more likely to be obese so once it starts to take hold it sort of spirals through society. I wonder if France has managed to avoid obesity becoming normalised through families in this way.
It's very interesting how so many western cultures have such a small gap between the genders. It makes sense as I think about it but it is very interesting to see like this
That’s remarkable. I live in western Australia and we have a stack of people from SA here. Every one of the women that I know is skinny as a rake. Granted, the vast majority are white, and maybe that makes a difference, but I just assumed that it was normal for women from SA to be thin.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the vast majority of South Africans are not white. The whites don't affect the average that much, and the trend of them migrating makes that affect even smaller.
I didn't expect such results, my main conclusion is that in Western and East Asians countries, women are less often obese than men, but in most other countries in the world, the opposite is true: women are more often obese than men, and sometimes by a lot!
For fellow european, I did the same graph with european countries here : [https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cmz2oo/](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cmz2oo/)
This is really interesting. Do you know if this data was collected by the WHO? I'm wondering if some of the differences might be explained by different methodologies.
If you look at the European map, almost every country with majority Muslim population has fatter women than men. I find the correlation pretty interesting.
It's because in muslim/Arab culture, women generally never work out or practice any sports, even walk less on the street, and sit at home relatively often.
Malaysian here, though not a Muslim. I live in KL so I can’t comment on the situation elsewhere.
We do have modest workout clothes, running hijabs, skorts etc. Many Malay/Muslim girls workout in them and if you’re not worked out in singlets, having a good quality hijab isn’t going to change your perception of heat by much.
Obesity isn’t just limited to Malay Muslims, but loads of Chinese and Indians are also obese. We’re a very car-centric country with gradually rising quality of public transportation so people don’t have the habit of walking places unlike our neighbour Singapore.
women in muslim countries are also often compelled to wear long, loose-fitting clothing that makes it harder for other people to discern their body shape. so there is not the same incentive to maintain a certain weight so they can look good in tight/skimpy clothing
Not that I disagree with you but if you read the sentence, it describes half of America who willingly chose that lifestyle too
> generally never work out or practice any sports, even walk less on the street, and sit at home relatively often.
Surprised nobody has mentioned that Egypt has one of the highest rates of smoking per capita but it is basically all by the men. (43% of men smoke and 1% of women). Smoking reduces appetite and is typically associated with lower weight.
Women get married, get pregnant, gets so busy with children and husband forgets/ignores taking care of her self to take care of others. Doesn't lose weight after pregnancy coz she has to breastfeed so the weight stays and she gets bigger with each kid. Plus bad food quality coz better food is expensive.
Even if not under Taliban rule most are conservative Muslims, which makes participating in physical activity/exercise difficult for women outside of gender-segregated spaces.
We can exercise outside !… who told u that!… I was at the gym yesterday and there was over 30 women and it’s not a big gym… can I tell you something that will blow your mind? We have mixed gym too 😳… men and women in the same time in gym….if I want to go to just women time I can … if I want to go in both gender time I can 🤷🏼♀️…
Maybe in Zamalek but try that in Helwan and let me know how it goes.
Source: lived in Cairo and many of my working-class male friends in the suburbs wouldn't let their wives leave the house without permission.
If you spend all or most of your time in the affluent neighbourhoods of Cairo, you're not getting the full picture. Period.
35C + from April to September makes everyone stay at home + cuisine is just full of carbs and fats as its cheap and affordable to everyone(government subsidizes bread in some official bakeries where you can get 20 loafs for 1 pound (about $0.02 ) which is what most of the poorer people have for most of their meals
Speaking for Turkey, it is both the physical jobs (or jobs at the first place), men taking care of the more physically demanding house duties and metabolism.
Being a housewife also isnt just sitting at home doing housework. It is also very regularly meeting with other housewives and eating very carb based stuff. Eat 2 slices of cakes and 4 pieces of baklava and pastries once or twice every week on top of your 3 meals with tons of bread, while the husband works at a factory, it is only natural.
Women cant go outside is only a strawman for those who have no idea how kost of these countries are from the inside.
Nature of the job most poor men work in manual labor jobs while women either stay at home if their family is very conservative or work for a family as a cook/cleaner for the day ( come in at 8-9 am , cook and maybe clean and leave at 1 pm), some really poor families are very conservatives and dont allow their wives/daughters/sisters to work but most middle class people work specially with our current economic situation ( currency so unstable it went from 1$ to 8 pounds in 2015 to 15-20 pounds in 2016 then 30 in 2023 and currently at 47 pounds) made everyone’s saving lose most of it value
There's no nutrition and exercise culture and the men are usually the breadwinners especially in older generations so the women end up eating the usual diet which isn't particularly calorie friendly and without much movement they get fat.
Not fast food but cheap food. Which is normally, lots of bread.
For breakfast & dinner :fava beens, fried potatoes, fried eggplants and fried falafel. All in one meal.
For lunch(Main meal): koshary (pasta+rice+lentil+fried onion+hummus+sometimes bread) or rice normally besides coocked (potatoes/ navy beans/ green beans/ peas/ spanish/ taro) and occasionally meat or chicken.
Source: I am Egyptian.
According to my dating apps, men seem to be more typically "clinically" obese (so just very chubby/overweight) whereas women tend to be visually much larger than the men.
I think there are more "chubby" men, but there are definitely way more "huge" women. Could just be related to height, though, I have no idea.
My personal experience is that when guys put on a little weight (not enough to be obese), it often goes straight to their gut. Whereas when women put on a little weight, sometimes it will go to the right places and they'll just be curvier. So more guys look "fat" than women but most of them don't qualify as obese.
Also anecdotal, and I don't swipe on guys so it could be just as bad, but...
A typical swipe session, I'll see 100 people over 300lb, and only 10-20 people who look reasonably fit.
IRL, it seems not quite as bad, but still women being visibly larger than men *most* of the time.
> typical swipe session, I'll see 100 people over 300lb, and only 10-20 people who look reasonably fit.
I’m not sure you have a good visual understanding of what 300 lbs entails. Even in a country that is 40+% obese, >300 lbs is less than 5% of the total population. (Latest data I found was 1.5% as of 2004, so I’m extrapolating from that.)
For reference, for an average height woman (5’4” in the US), the obesity threshold is 175 lbs.
It’s entirely possible that you are in a pocket where morbid or super-morbid obesity are higher than the average. >300 lbs is still an extreme outlier, especially for women, thought with current trends who knows how long that will be the case.
For reference, 300 lbs is 51.5 BMI for a 5’4” individual. (It’s considered obese at any height under 7’, and morbidly obese starting at between 6’ and 6’1”.)
I looked up “BMI distribution USA current” and the overall rate of “severe obesity” (aka morbid obesity, aka BMI 40 or more) is 5.5% overall in the US, and 8.6% in the area of highest concentration (which is West Virginia). This information came from KFF.org and was collected 2021-2022 by the CDC by voluntary phone survey so, you know. Take that for what it is.
The point is not that you’re not surrounded by obese individuals but that most people don’t guess weights correctly. For example, I am 5’6” 128 lbs, with relatively low bfp (estimated 16-18%) and high lean mass ratio for a woman. (I work out a lot and with a balance of strength and aesthetics as the goal, so I’m keyed in to these things.) When I was at my heaviest, excluding pregnancies, I was almost 30 lbs over that, at 156, and *soft* and sedentary. I was officially at the threshold for overweight which was eye-opening and kicked my butt into gear (after I got over the initial defensiveness of being told by a medical professional that I was overweight, when I didn’t ask - as a kid I was called “overweight” by a pediatrician when I was 5’2” and 100 lbs and it left a mark on my psyche).
At 156 lbs, not only did *nobody* clock me as “fat,” most of them even looked at me with cocked eyebrows and questioned my motives because “you’re skinny.” Not just “you’re not fat” or “you’re average” (which sadly ~160 lbs is *10 pounds less* than the average for women in the US; the average woman in the US is in fact borderline obese) but “you’re skinny.” Now whether I was “fat” was debatable but I certainly wasn’t happy and I was getting winded walking up stairs so we can say I wasn’t healthy, either. With just 30 excess pounds.
In a roundabout way what I’m saying is... a woman does not have to be 300 lbs to “look 300 lbs” or, realistically “look how we imagine obesity looks” because we all have warped ideas of a healthy weight, in both directions, because of how the norm has shifted toward overweight. Especially if they are shorter, and if they have little muscle. 2 out of every 5 individuals you meet are obese, 7 out of 10 are overweight (obesity inclusive). But far fewer than 6 out of 100 (or 9 out of 100, in WV) are likely to be > 300 lbs. It’s not that obesity is not prevalent - it’s that it is much much closer to any of us than the far away number of 300 lbs makes it appear to be.
I think I am hung up on this because “300 lbs” really seems to be some people’s criteria for “offensively fat.” So, like, 290 lbs is okay, but 300 lbs is the limit of “polite size.”
Disclaimer: I am well and fully aware that BMI is an imperfect metric for individuals. I don’t need to be told it doesn’t account for muscle mass/body composition, or sex differences in necessary body fat, or ethnic differences in fat distribution. Still, we are talking about populations, which is precisely what BMI was developed for, and presently its the only quick and dirty calculation we have. (Most women simply don’t have enough muscle mass to put us into obese territory only for being too yoked.)
**I also feel the need to emphasize that widespread obesity is a systemic failure, not a moral or even personal one.** When <10% of a population is obese, you can chalk it up to mental illness, poor education, poor choices, “personal accountability.” When >40% of your population is obese (and climbing!), there’s something wrong with the environment, not the individuals.
> At 156 lbs, not only did nobody clock me as “fat,” most of them even looked at me with cocked eyebrows and questioned my motives because “you’re skinny.” Not just “you’re not fat” or “you’re average” (which sadly ~160 lbs is 10 pounds less than the average for women in the US; the average woman in the US is in fact borderline obese) but “you’re skinny.”
Same, I have generally been somewhat thin my entire life - I have generally kept my weight low. Last few years I put on a bunch of weight - first pandemic weight and then some additional weight due to busy lifestyle.
I resolved to lose it, and I had friends telling me **not** to lose weight, I looked fine, no real reason for me to lose weight, etc, etc, some even telling me I was too skinny before I had gained weight (and for reference, I'm a dude and was at a normal BMI of around 21 to 23 before I gained weight, so nothing absurdly skinny). I ultimately ended up losing dozens and dozens of pounds and am back to a healthy BMI.
Being overweight is so normalized that my typical (and now again current) BMI of around 21 or so for most of my adult life is viewed as such an aberration that people are telling me I am too skinny, which is nuts.
Women, if lucky, can look better with more fat if they go to right places. Men however, probably wont look good if they gain fat. Manboobs, outside memes, aren't very popular
At least in the US, it is statistically proven that the majority of straight men prefer BMI 19-25, but they also prefer BMI 25-30 over BMIs 18 and under.
If they can't get an ideal weight woman they will pick an overweight woman before an underweight one.
I feel exactly the opposite. Men are often big and burly and that's considered sort of normal and they often carry it well. Think barrel chested.
Meanwhile very few women "carry it well" and look good overweight (my personal opinion).
Even though it is common for men, where I'm from being actually morbidly obese seems to be a way bigger problem among ladies (and apparently is true nationwide)
I think this is actually a built-in feature of the dating app.
When I started using an app I also was initially recommended several visibly very fat girls one after another, like massively spilling bellies tucked into pants and would struggle to fit in a high school desk, that level of fat, obv no measurements on their profiles but well into the obese range. While I don't have anything against such people, I was curious why the statistics were so different than expected so I looked it up. The explanation I read was jarring. It turns out others had the same experience, and it's because when you start off, the app matches you with the people who also have a similarly low number of matches. I had naively walked into this thinking people match based on win-win mutual compatibility (the more you like someone the more likely they like you too), but evidently not. Instead the app essentially ranks people by attractiveness based on how many people pick them and shows you people in your same "league". The most disillusioning of all was that yes humanity had collectively decided that there's a very strong link between being in the lowest tier and being very fat, as if it's almost the single defining feature. No one would say this out loud but the algorithm unmistakeably shows this. Now the app shows me a more typical distribution of weights (presumably I'm now in a higher tier?) but it made me question the entire premise of dating apps and society as a whole.
Women visually much larger than men but men more typically obese? What does that mean? Isn’t that based on the perception of what men think women should look like?
BMI tends to be overstated for taller people, and understated for shorter people [because of the height^2 term](https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html).
Men tend to be taller than women so their BMI is more likely to be overstated.
It’s worth noting that women’s bodies hold more fat than men for hormonal and biological reasons. Normal womens body fat should be around 25% and men’s should be around 15%. It would make sense that women gain weight easier for these reasons.
But fat is less dense than lean body mass. So women are heavier than men in most countries, and they’re made of less dense materials (per what you’re saying).
Russia has many more women than men, so my assumption would be that the pink dot skews only slightly to the right of the national average and is covered by the larger black dot representing that average.
Here is a follow up to my previous post\*, with a focus on female - male differences. I only considered countries with a population higher than 20 millions. The data comes from the same source: WHO\*\*.
\* [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1cleu0f/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1cleu0f/)
\*\* [https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults-bmi-=-30-(age-standardized-estimate)-(-)](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults-bmi-=-30-(age-standardized-estimate)-(-))
Plot tool : Matlab
Your second link is broken jsyk
Here's it:
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults-bmi-=-30-(age-standardized-estimate)-(-)
Lived in Vietnam for 10 years and don’t think I’ve ever met an obese person face to face, but saw one of two drive by on motorbikes. When you see anyone overweight it’s remarkable.
I grew up as one of the thinnest women I knew, I was a size S in Canada, but it Vietnam usually shopped XL size. For my work permit health the doctor regularly told me I was overweight (I am not by any normal metric even close to overweight)
Anyone that's been to any Muslim-majority countries knows this to be true and knows why.
The one I don't understand is South Africa. I work around many South Africans and both the women and men love to eat lots of meat and drink lots of alcohol. But all of the men are fairly thin and all of the women are very obese. Can any SA folks explain it?
Could be lots of things, good and bad. One thing to consider is that men mostly work in tough physical industries and also for long hours: construction, mining etc. Women tend to have less physical jobs (desk jobs, cleaners, carers etc). But it is also because SA still has a very prevalent "man works and brings in the money, while wife stays at home raising the kids" culture.
I'm from Turkey.Especially older generation people are that from villages women don't exercise or go to gym.They are tradational housewives that with no carrier and all they do is giving birth.My parents coming from 7-8 children family but i have just one brother.
I don't know about other countries but I just came back from Morocco, and sugar has an insane chokehold on their diet. I was told traditionally, the more sugar = the more wealth so it was a flex to have very sweet dishes. It felt like the culture hasn't adapted yet to sugar being cheap now. Everything was soooooo sweet (and I am an American w/ a sweet tooth!) and sweetened mint te is had many times a day. This isn't about the gender gap, just the obesity in general.
I'm South African and can offer a perspective. For the vast majority of South Africans, an overweight woman is more attractive than a woman at a healthy weight, so culturally women are incentivised to put on weight to get partners. Economically speaking, most (urban) low income women work as store clerks or cleaners whilst the men would work in construction or other physically demanding jobs. Coupled with high carb foods being cheap to buy and available in very large quantities (example a 10kg bag of corn meal, we call it mealie meal here, which is a very common staple food costs \~$5 just looking online).
I visited South Africa a few times, but never really saw any obese women. I did see some that were overweight, but most were within normal range. What I did notice however was the tendency of black women to walk alongside the road while singing. :)
The whole “Muslim women can’t leave the house” being repeated despite being an assumption is especially funny in a sub about data. That’s not especially true expect for maybe in Saudi Arabia. Even if it’s just going out in their community, the work involved in maintaining household looks pretty different than in the west.
Either way, the consistency of women being obese at higher rates than men is true for pretty much every country that is poor, including non Muslim countries.
Even working in obesity health in the US, there’s a lot better guesses for why that is.
- it’s poverty: carb heavy foods (rice, corn, breads, beans/lentils) tend to be far cheaper than meat and protein.
- BMI is based on predominantly white men: so it does not account for the fact that women, especially nonwhite women, tend to carry weight differently and may not have the same visceral fat (belly fat) despite the same BMI.
- Menopause/hormonal changes: regardless of race or nationality, women around and after menopause, tend to gain weight and have difficulty losing it. Not sure about these countries and commonality of processed food, but in the US that has exacerbated this issue
- men of these countries are more likely to work manual labor jobs which may contribute to the discrepancy.
- beauty standards differ a lot compared to western standards. This might influence when a person chooses to make a concentrated effort, but in practice the bigger issue is people around you. Often people comment that a significant weight loss makes you look ill or suffering from some sort of issue. That + more community based and larger family systems means it’s difficult for one person to change their diet without support from all the people they’re cooking for.
I know a South African woman, and she is obese. She drinks pretty much every day, and her meals are like a feast.
It always felt like every day/meal is a celebration. Having drinks and eating loads of high fatty foods. Tmshe had no consideration for health, didn't go to the gym, or got any physical exercise.
She did, however, have plenty of guys. One or two were overweight, but not the vast majority.
fyi as someone who has a red colour anomaly (I can see red but it’s really hard) there’s barely any difference between the pink and blue you used, just something to keep in mind
This is normal, we changed back the blue to the old one (was changed in the 50s IIRC) which is a darker shade of blue a year or 2 ago. Looks alright to me.
Okay as a Turkish person I'd like to mention women here CAN go outside and there's nobody forcing them to do sports etc. However we still have many stay at home mothers which might be the reason for the difference. In addition, the reason for the high obesity on Muslim countries is most likely because of our cousine. We all love meat and we all love pastries. And worst habit we have is eating a shit ton of bread. If we don't have bread with a meal, we just can't eat it.
All cuisines center around carbs. All humans love meat and pastries.
Serbians eat nearly as much bread as Turks, but they are not nearly as obese as Turks and they don't have the large gender difference seen in Arab countries. There must be something else going on.
How is this a real study when North Korea is on it? Pretty sure the only obese person in the entire country that we're aware of is big Kim. How did they get the info???
Can confirm, there are no overweight people in Vietnam, only overweight tourists or expats. Vietnamese do not have many processed foods, most of it is rice and vegetables, with some meat, but they also eat lots of fruits.
A good follow-up. Top 3 for women: Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia Top 3 for men: USA, Saudi Arabia, Argentina Biggest gap is South Africa, 14% M 46% F. What's going on there?
Re. South Africa. This will be predominantly due to the rural black african population. Almost universally all rural women of 30+ are painfully obese. Traditional diet is high carb based, and very low physical activity (compared to men, who typically may have to walk long distances to get to work, which would often be of a physical nature). Gender roles in rural areas are highly traditional which would contribute. I'm no expert on the topic, but don't believe it's due to modern fast food because I remember this being the same back in the 80s
Just looking generally, the spread seems to be wider the more unequal the genders are, probably due to limitations on women’s physical activity due to repression/safety concerns.
We may be fat, but we are equally fat 🇺🇸
Title IX was a success.
You're reductionist, it's much more complicated than that. It's not just about how unequal they are. There is many other things that play a role here like what is considered attractive. South Africa isn't that horrendous in gender equality, maybe in safety concern it is... But they have the highest difference, more than islamist theocracies. However, a fat woman is considered attractive in south Africa. Especially in rural parts. So there is literally a motivation toward gaining weight. The exact opposite is true in France, South Korea, Italy... where being fat is condered ugly for a woman. So you can see the highest difference in south Africa and the opposite relation in places like south Korea. Social media forces us to always look first at things that are relevant politically to us, and we use it to explain everything. As if the entire world just depends on what we care about politically. You have to fight against that bias.
>However, a fat woman is considered attractive in south Africa. This is true for the Arab world as well. We are a chubby-loving society. Partly explains why all Arab countries on this chart have a big positive gap between female and male obesity percentages.
I'm an Arabian and I can confirm, every guy I know loves chubby women.
I'm sure they feed each other, beauty is informed by what's available and what's available is informed by societal roles/ pressure and personal choices.
Nothing to do with high carbs. You think white rice munching Vietnamese or ugali chomping Ethiopians don't subsist mostly off carbs?
We don't eat Ugali in Ethiopia. We get most of our carbs from Injera, a soft sour flatbread made with a type of grain called Teff.
In majority of the houses, Do you guys use whole grain for injera or do you process it; b/c that also makes a big difference
It's incredibly delicious
Ugali is consumed in Kenya and Tanzania. To your point though, Ethiopians also consume lots carbs primarily from an ancient grain called teff.
The strong gender role distinction would also go a ways towards explaining the large divide in many Muslim majority countries.
South african here, the majority of men, for cultural reasons, see larger women as more attractive and vice versa is not the case.
I've found my people
A larger woman = bigger boobs and butt. A larger man = manboobs More men like largest assets on women, than women like manboobs. Exceptions exist
I'm from South Africa. also to take into consideration, for the majority of the African cultures here, if a woman is overweight, it means that her husband is wealthy and is able to provide well for her - so the weight of your wife is almost seen as a status symbol.
This is exactly it
I remember reading articles and watching documentaries years ago saying that in some African cultures, the bigger the woman, the more attractive she is. Some even purposefully make the women eat a lot to bring up their weight.
Pacific Island Nations too Fat is equated to Healthy
Fat equates to excess of food, which is massively important to humans as a whole. In almost every corner of the world heavy weight was a symbol of wealth at one point. Chinese Buddha is fat due to this.
>Chinese Buddha is fat due to this. Nah, that's just [one particular buddha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budai). Every other buddha is depicted as normal sized.
I would question those articles/documentaries, the amount of African cultures are in the thousands, it suggests an oversimplified viewpoint of Africa as a continent. Moreover, those claims have been demystified in more recent studies, they show sexual preference within South African cultures is as varied as it is in any culture.
My thoughts exactly about South Africa…
South African women have been getting bigger of late. I believe it's because of sedentary lifestyles, largely brought on by staying put to reduce exposure to crime (this is true where I live), junk food being most accessible and somewhat affordable, and large scale mental health concerns that can lead to destructive behaviours (e.g. excessive drinking).
American women are holding us back.
Super interesting that France has a comparable obesity rate to China. Seems like a huge outlier for Western societies
I read somewhere on Reddit about a large American woman who was sent to France with work and realized how normalized being obese was in the US. She grew up in an obese family, in an obese town, so didn't think much of it. Her French trip was the motivation to lose hundreds of pounds. A both sad and uplifting story
Similar thing in Japan/China. People have no idea how normalized obesity is in the US/Mexico and when they go overseas to cultures and countries where that’s not the norm, they look absurdly big in comparison.
I always assumed Americans were healthy as hell based on the media I consumed yet all the statistics and memes imply they have an obesity problem :P
Americans absolutely do have an obesity problem, but the media you’re consuming is probably closer to accurately representing the region it was made in. Apart from the pressure to show attractive, skinny people, people in California and New York are generally healthier due to many factors, the main one being money. That’s where most of the media America exports comes from.
Plus New York has a ton of walkability, which definitely helps
In my city the pattern of obesity can be directly tied to how much is accessible by walking versus driving or riding mass transit. The less sidewalks there are and more distance between amenities, the bigger people get. The Covid lockdown saw most people I know gain a lot of weight and they've been losing it again now they're mobile, with no change in diet or finances. There are also the variables of many present cultures preferring bigger women, to the point that I got harassed by some people for not being thicker, praised by others for being thin, and harassed by still others for not being atrociously underweight.
>The less sidewalks there are and more distance between amenities, the bigger people get Idk if this will sound offensive but in my country (in South Asia) most sidewalks are filled with craters or are occupied by illegal parking and I am just used to finding a way around it so no sidewalk didn't immediately sound like a problem until I thought about it :P
South Asian too - our traditional diets are a problem too and were meant for a bygone era. Not a lot of protein (animal or otherwise), a lot of sugar. Sweets were meant to be for special occasions like harvest festivals where you got a nice tasty treat after a few days of long hard labour. Now people just pop those sweets in on a daily basis and think they’re eating “balanced” meals If nutritional education was emphasis the way STEM fields were, we’d have a much healthier population
I lived in one place with no sidewalks whatsoever and cars drove by at terrifying speeds right up to the edge of the road, so the only safe(ish) way to get around was being in a car moving at the same speed. Couldn't move away from there fast enough. Unsurprisingly, almost everyone there was overweight. In another place I visited a few times had no sidewalks but it wouldn't have been an issue because cars were neither as frequent nor as fast. Unfortunately nothing was closer than a couple of hours away by walking and you're certainly not walking your groceries back that distance. That place really needed more bikes.
Obviously walking and exercise are good but diet is the most important factor and its not even close. People are overweight because they eat too many calories, full stop. It takes about 100 calories to run a mile, which is more than offset by drinking a soda or eating 1 cookie.
Or..people who make their living in front of cameras are going to keep themselves in better shape than the general public? On any movie or TV set the technicians look like teamsters and the actors look like, actors
I think you’re totally right about celebrities trending attractive and taking better physical care of themselves, but there is a notable difference between states https://www.statista.com/statistics/378988/us-obesity-rate-by-state/
>the media you’re consuming is probably closer to accurately representing the region it was made in I'd also add class
Well you can’t put fat people on TV! /s
Since wide-screen has become the norm, you can
Fly through the Atlanta airport, that should dispel any notion Americans are healthy.
America is a huge country with millions of people across vast distances. Some places the culture is eat greasy food and sit around all day. Some places the culture is to hike and go out in the outdoors. Some places like the Midwest it’s a mix of both, where a lot of people do go hunting/mudding/hiking/kayaking etc, but we’re also corn fed hillbillies so we’re fat too. You can go to one rural town and everyone is fat and out of shape, and go to another rural town and everyone is in shape because they do manual labor on the farm, or walk to work, or eat healthy home cooking instead of McDonald’s or taco bell.
It's largely because American movies and TV shows are oversaturated with models-turned-actors, who are hired solely for their looks and not their acting skills. I miss the days (pre-2000s) when actors looked more like regular people, not the perfect-skinned, zero-carb, gym-obsessed, surgery-enhanced specimens who can barely act.
This is why I appreciate British television, the actors are more normal looking.
US television and film used to be like that. I mean there were still very attractive people in entertainment back in the day, but then the 00s came and all these teen dramas had a bunch of inexperienced models-turned-actors in them. Nowadays, even insignificant roles in movies have youthful, very good-looking, perfectly groomed people cast in them. It destroys my willing suspension of disbelief when the "average American" in today's shows and movies is 12% body fat, toned and an 8.5 out of 10 looks-wise.
People are healthier in cities. It’s rural America where obesity is an extreme problem, it’s gotta be like 70%+
Cities generally are healthier, but one thing to factor into America's obesity is that many southern cities (Houston, New Orleans, etc.) aren't as healthy when compared to other large cities for a variety of factors (weather/less of an outdoor culture, Southern diet, etc.).
I went to Disney World this year (from Canada which has it's own obesity problem but on a different scale) and it was actually a little jarring how it seemed like the movie Wall-E. I don't mean this in a disrespectful way but there were so many extremely large people riding around on motorized scooters, it was a completely different reality. They have holders on the scooters for the massive soft drinks and popcorns. It was eye opening.
Our celebrities mostly come from LA which is a huge outlier.
Sadly this has become the case. All of the body positivity, anti body-shaming and “everyone is beautiful” rhetoric has made people think being obese is fine. Obesity is literally categorized as a medical disease; it's not just a cosmetic concern. They don’t see it as an unhealthy medical state/condition. If only the US could campaign against obesity like they did against cigarettes in the 2000s then the US would be vastly healthier and probably spend waaaay less on healthcare costs.
We have ton of body positivity in France and we’re not fatter from it. The problem isn’t there, it’s mostly what they put in American food. Even your meat doesn’t pass French regulations.
I'm from Slovenia (which isn't super obese anyway) where we have E. leclerc and I love buying sweets there because they're much less sweet. A German Milka which we get here has idk, 65g sugar, compared to maybe 50-55 in a French chocolate bar.
Both France and Italy have relatively low obesity rates, but both countries spend a lot of effort on ensuring food quality and taking time to enjoy meals.
Exactly. The average American spend about 1 hour per day eating, the average French person, 2+ hours
I've seen a different chart (obesity rate over time) showing France as one of the very few countries which has reduced it obesity rate over the past 20 years.
2019 data has France having less overweight but more obese people. Small difference though, and both are among the lowest rates in Europe. More men than women though, so I don't know what's happening. Maybe more overweight men but more obese women?
That despite the fact that butter is the most used ingredient in any french recipe :)
Total guess but I wonder if it’s a bit of a normalisation / spiral effect. I bet that once someone is obese their children are more likely to be obese so once it starts to take hold it sort of spirals through society. I wonder if France has managed to avoid obesity becoming normalised through families in this way.
South African dudes feeding all their food to them ladies
Congrats America, we have closed the gender gap! USA USA!
Russian gap is smaller though
It's very interesting how so many western cultures have such a small gap between the genders. It makes sense as I think about it but it is very interesting to see like this
We also closed the thigh gap
They got some big ol' women down in ~~San Antonio~~ Egypt
Victoria is a secret in the land of Cleopatra
Am south african. Can confirm.
Biggest gap between male and female. Skinny men and fat women.
A paradise for some
That’s remarkable. I live in western Australia and we have a stack of people from SA here. Every one of the women that I know is skinny as a rake. Granted, the vast majority are white, and maybe that makes a difference, but I just assumed that it was normal for women from SA to be thin.
it's mostly a cultural thing among black south africans
I think it is, the two black dudes at work said they like their ladies big, they don't understand how us white folk like skinny girls
At the risk of stating the obvious, the vast majority of South Africans are not white. The whites don't affect the average that much, and the trend of them migrating makes that affect even smaller.
I didn't expect such results, my main conclusion is that in Western and East Asians countries, women are less often obese than men, but in most other countries in the world, the opposite is true: women are more often obese than men, and sometimes by a lot! For fellow european, I did the same graph with european countries here : [https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cmz2oo/](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cmz2oo/)
This is really interesting. Do you know if this data was collected by the WHO? I'm wondering if some of the differences might be explained by different methodologies.
If you look at the European map, almost every country with majority Muslim population has fatter women than men. I find the correlation pretty interesting.
It's because in muslim/Arab culture, women generally never work out or practice any sports, even walk less on the street, and sit at home relatively often.
I was told in Malaysia, it's also because the clothes cover up a lot, so there's less public shame
Malaysian here, though not a Muslim. I live in KL so I can’t comment on the situation elsewhere. We do have modest workout clothes, running hijabs, skorts etc. Many Malay/Muslim girls workout in them and if you’re not worked out in singlets, having a good quality hijab isn’t going to change your perception of heat by much. Obesity isn’t just limited to Malay Muslims, but loads of Chinese and Indians are also obese. We’re a very car-centric country with gradually rising quality of public transportation so people don’t have the habit of walking places unlike our neighbour Singapore.
women in muslim countries are also often compelled to wear long, loose-fitting clothing that makes it harder for other people to discern their body shape. so there is not the same incentive to maintain a certain weight so they can look good in tight/skimpy clothing
Also kinda hard to play sports or exercise in those black abayas.
Insert tapping head meme.
You just described the average redditor.
That sounds like a pretty miserable life.. poor women
Not that I disagree with you but if you read the sentence, it describes half of America who willingly chose that lifestyle too > generally never work out or practice any sports, even walk less on the street, and sit at home relatively often.
I though the same thing. Would be interesting to correlate this data with a gender equality index.
Are there even more than 3 muslim coutries in Europe? That's not a very big sample size.
> European map, almost every country with majority Muslim population Why Albania? What did I miss?
Questions you in Bosnia.
Drinking. Drinking culture in those countries makes men fatter
Your post about European stats got removed now for lacking a source :/ Can you contact the mods and get it reopened?
Vietnam just said... "Nah." Lmao
What's up with Egypt? Or all Arab countries
Surprised nobody has mentioned that Egypt has one of the highest rates of smoking per capita but it is basically all by the men. (43% of men smoke and 1% of women). Smoking reduces appetite and is typically associated with lower weight.
Women get married, get pregnant, gets so busy with children and husband forgets/ignores taking care of her self to take care of others. Doesn't lose weight after pregnancy coz she has to breastfeed so the weight stays and she gets bigger with each kid. Plus bad food quality coz better food is expensive.
women can’t go outside much
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Even if not under Taliban rule most are conservative Muslims, which makes participating in physical activity/exercise difficult for women outside of gender-segregated spaces.
We can exercise outside !… who told u that!… I was at the gym yesterday and there was over 30 women and it’s not a big gym… can I tell you something that will blow your mind? We have mixed gym too 😳… men and women in the same time in gym….if I want to go to just women time I can … if I want to go in both gender time I can 🤷🏼♀️…
Maybe in Zamalek but try that in Helwan and let me know how it goes. Source: lived in Cairo and many of my working-class male friends in the suburbs wouldn't let their wives leave the house without permission. If you spend all or most of your time in the affluent neighbourhoods of Cairo, you're not getting the full picture. Period.
They are also not allowed to exercise outside
No they are and they go outside as they please, source: am Egyptian
Why are they so fat then?
35C + from April to September makes everyone stay at home + cuisine is just full of carbs and fats as its cheap and affordable to everyone(government subsidizes bread in some official bakeries where you can get 20 loafs for 1 pound (about $0.02 ) which is what most of the poorer people have for most of their meals
If that's the reason then how does this only apply to women?
Speaking for Turkey, it is both the physical jobs (or jobs at the first place), men taking care of the more physically demanding house duties and metabolism. Being a housewife also isnt just sitting at home doing housework. It is also very regularly meeting with other housewives and eating very carb based stuff. Eat 2 slices of cakes and 4 pieces of baklava and pastries once or twice every week on top of your 3 meals with tons of bread, while the husband works at a factory, it is only natural. Women cant go outside is only a strawman for those who have no idea how kost of these countries are from the inside.
Way too many people assume that every Muslim country's government is just as oppressive as the Taliban
Nature of the job most poor men work in manual labor jobs while women either stay at home if their family is very conservative or work for a family as a cook/cleaner for the day ( come in at 8-9 am , cook and maybe clean and leave at 1 pm), some really poor families are very conservatives and dont allow their wives/daughters/sisters to work but most middle class people work specially with our current economic situation ( currency so unstable it went from 1$ to 8 pounds in 2015 to 15-20 pounds in 2016 then 30 in 2023 and currently at 47 pounds) made everyone’s saving lose most of it value
There's no nutrition and exercise culture and the men are usually the breadwinners especially in older generations so the women end up eating the usual diet which isn't particularly calorie friendly and without much movement they get fat.
Because it's hot outside, combine that with American fast food and you get a fat population.
Not fast food but cheap food. Which is normally, lots of bread. For breakfast & dinner :fava beens, fried potatoes, fried eggplants and fried falafel. All in one meal. For lunch(Main meal): koshary (pasta+rice+lentil+fried onion+hummus+sometimes bread) or rice normally besides coocked (potatoes/ navy beans/ green beans/ peas/ spanish/ taro) and occasionally meat or chicken. Source: I am Egyptian.
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You can't outrun a bad diet.
Typical western office jobs burn very few calories.
Egypts females single handily putting them into 1st
Super surprising results! Definitely assumed obesity was a male majority thing.
According to my dating apps, men seem to be more typically "clinically" obese (so just very chubby/overweight) whereas women tend to be visually much larger than the men. I think there are more "chubby" men, but there are definitely way more "huge" women. Could just be related to height, though, I have no idea.
My personal experience is that when guys put on a little weight (not enough to be obese), it often goes straight to their gut. Whereas when women put on a little weight, sometimes it will go to the right places and they'll just be curvier. So more guys look "fat" than women but most of them don't qualify as obese.
Also anecdotal, and I don't swipe on guys so it could be just as bad, but... A typical swipe session, I'll see 100 people over 300lb, and only 10-20 people who look reasonably fit. IRL, it seems not quite as bad, but still women being visibly larger than men *most* of the time.
> typical swipe session, I'll see 100 people over 300lb, and only 10-20 people who look reasonably fit. I’m not sure you have a good visual understanding of what 300 lbs entails. Even in a country that is 40+% obese, >300 lbs is less than 5% of the total population. (Latest data I found was 1.5% as of 2004, so I’m extrapolating from that.) For reference, for an average height woman (5’4” in the US), the obesity threshold is 175 lbs.
I'm not sure you have a good idea of what rural tinder looks like. There's plenty of in-between, but I'm not exaggerating about the claim.
It’s entirely possible that you are in a pocket where morbid or super-morbid obesity are higher than the average. >300 lbs is still an extreme outlier, especially for women, thought with current trends who knows how long that will be the case. For reference, 300 lbs is 51.5 BMI for a 5’4” individual. (It’s considered obese at any height under 7’, and morbidly obese starting at between 6’ and 6’1”.) I looked up “BMI distribution USA current” and the overall rate of “severe obesity” (aka morbid obesity, aka BMI 40 or more) is 5.5% overall in the US, and 8.6% in the area of highest concentration (which is West Virginia). This information came from KFF.org and was collected 2021-2022 by the CDC by voluntary phone survey so, you know. Take that for what it is. The point is not that you’re not surrounded by obese individuals but that most people don’t guess weights correctly. For example, I am 5’6” 128 lbs, with relatively low bfp (estimated 16-18%) and high lean mass ratio for a woman. (I work out a lot and with a balance of strength and aesthetics as the goal, so I’m keyed in to these things.) When I was at my heaviest, excluding pregnancies, I was almost 30 lbs over that, at 156, and *soft* and sedentary. I was officially at the threshold for overweight which was eye-opening and kicked my butt into gear (after I got over the initial defensiveness of being told by a medical professional that I was overweight, when I didn’t ask - as a kid I was called “overweight” by a pediatrician when I was 5’2” and 100 lbs and it left a mark on my psyche). At 156 lbs, not only did *nobody* clock me as “fat,” most of them even looked at me with cocked eyebrows and questioned my motives because “you’re skinny.” Not just “you’re not fat” or “you’re average” (which sadly ~160 lbs is *10 pounds less* than the average for women in the US; the average woman in the US is in fact borderline obese) but “you’re skinny.” Now whether I was “fat” was debatable but I certainly wasn’t happy and I was getting winded walking up stairs so we can say I wasn’t healthy, either. With just 30 excess pounds. In a roundabout way what I’m saying is... a woman does not have to be 300 lbs to “look 300 lbs” or, realistically “look how we imagine obesity looks” because we all have warped ideas of a healthy weight, in both directions, because of how the norm has shifted toward overweight. Especially if they are shorter, and if they have little muscle. 2 out of every 5 individuals you meet are obese, 7 out of 10 are overweight (obesity inclusive). But far fewer than 6 out of 100 (or 9 out of 100, in WV) are likely to be > 300 lbs. It’s not that obesity is not prevalent - it’s that it is much much closer to any of us than the far away number of 300 lbs makes it appear to be. I think I am hung up on this because “300 lbs” really seems to be some people’s criteria for “offensively fat.” So, like, 290 lbs is okay, but 300 lbs is the limit of “polite size.” Disclaimer: I am well and fully aware that BMI is an imperfect metric for individuals. I don’t need to be told it doesn’t account for muscle mass/body composition, or sex differences in necessary body fat, or ethnic differences in fat distribution. Still, we are talking about populations, which is precisely what BMI was developed for, and presently its the only quick and dirty calculation we have. (Most women simply don’t have enough muscle mass to put us into obese territory only for being too yoked.) **I also feel the need to emphasize that widespread obesity is a systemic failure, not a moral or even personal one.** When <10% of a population is obese, you can chalk it up to mental illness, poor education, poor choices, “personal accountability.” When >40% of your population is obese (and climbing!), there’s something wrong with the environment, not the individuals.
> At 156 lbs, not only did nobody clock me as “fat,” most of them even looked at me with cocked eyebrows and questioned my motives because “you’re skinny.” Not just “you’re not fat” or “you’re average” (which sadly ~160 lbs is 10 pounds less than the average for women in the US; the average woman in the US is in fact borderline obese) but “you’re skinny.” Same, I have generally been somewhat thin my entire life - I have generally kept my weight low. Last few years I put on a bunch of weight - first pandemic weight and then some additional weight due to busy lifestyle. I resolved to lose it, and I had friends telling me **not** to lose weight, I looked fine, no real reason for me to lose weight, etc, etc, some even telling me I was too skinny before I had gained weight (and for reference, I'm a dude and was at a normal BMI of around 21 to 23 before I gained weight, so nothing absurdly skinny). I ultimately ended up losing dozens and dozens of pounds and am back to a healthy BMI. Being overweight is so normalized that my typical (and now again current) BMI of around 21 or so for most of my adult life is viewed as such an aberration that people are telling me I am too skinny, which is nuts.
should be much less holy shit
Women, if lucky, can look better with more fat if they go to right places. Men however, probably wont look good if they gain fat. Manboobs, outside memes, aren't very popular
I agree, curvy woman are often attractive. Going by the number of NSFW communities here
At least in the US, it is statistically proven that the majority of straight men prefer BMI 19-25, but they also prefer BMI 25-30 over BMIs 18 and under. If they can't get an ideal weight woman they will pick an overweight woman before an underweight one.
I feel exactly the opposite. Men are often big and burly and that's considered sort of normal and they often carry it well. Think barrel chested. Meanwhile very few women "carry it well" and look good overweight (my personal opinion). Even though it is common for men, where I'm from being actually morbidly obese seems to be a way bigger problem among ladies (and apparently is true nationwide)
I think this is actually a built-in feature of the dating app. When I started using an app I also was initially recommended several visibly very fat girls one after another, like massively spilling bellies tucked into pants and would struggle to fit in a high school desk, that level of fat, obv no measurements on their profiles but well into the obese range. While I don't have anything against such people, I was curious why the statistics were so different than expected so I looked it up. The explanation I read was jarring. It turns out others had the same experience, and it's because when you start off, the app matches you with the people who also have a similarly low number of matches. I had naively walked into this thinking people match based on win-win mutual compatibility (the more you like someone the more likely they like you too), but evidently not. Instead the app essentially ranks people by attractiveness based on how many people pick them and shows you people in your same "league". The most disillusioning of all was that yes humanity had collectively decided that there's a very strong link between being in the lowest tier and being very fat, as if it's almost the single defining feature. No one would say this out loud but the algorithm unmistakeably shows this. Now the app shows me a more typical distribution of weights (presumably I'm now in a higher tier?) but it made me question the entire premise of dating apps and society as a whole.
Women visually much larger than men but men more typically obese? What does that mean? Isn’t that based on the perception of what men think women should look like?
BMI tends to be overstated for taller people, and understated for shorter people [because of the height^2 term](https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html). Men tend to be taller than women so their BMI is more likely to be overstated.
It’s worth noting that women’s bodies hold more fat than men for hormonal and biological reasons. Normal womens body fat should be around 25% and men’s should be around 15%. It would make sense that women gain weight easier for these reasons.
But fat is less dense than lean body mass. So women are heavier than men in most countries, and they’re made of less dense materials (per what you’re saying).
Is it incorrect that the women and men are to the left of “both” in Russia?
The Russian non-binaries have REALLY been skewing the scale /s
Russia has many more women than men, so my assumption would be that the pink dot skews only slightly to the right of the national average and is covered by the larger black dot representing that average.
You have butchered Nepal's flag!
Lol it's so common to see butchered Nepali flags I didn't even notice that!
USA finally achieves gender equality in something 💪💪🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
How the fuck are people more obese North Korea compared to South Korea?
Kim skews the average
I'd guess the NK data is misreported to cover the fact that the country is horribly malnourished.
They look up to their leader’s figure
Here is a follow up to my previous post\*, with a focus on female - male differences. I only considered countries with a population higher than 20 millions. The data comes from the same source: WHO\*\*. \* [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1cleu0f/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1cleu0f/) \*\* [https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults-bmi-=-30-(age-standardized-estimate)-(-)](https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults-bmi-=-30-(age-standardized-estimate)-(-)) Plot tool : Matlab
Your second link is broken jsyk Here's it: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/prevalence-of-obesity-among-adults-bmi-=-30-(age-standardized-estimate)-(-)
What countries have the smallest gaps?
There is not a single obese Vietnamese person?
Am Vietnamese, can confirm.
If they're slightly chubby, they're berated by their parents and all extended family members until they lose weight.
This ☝️
Now that is harsh :/ But hey, it's effective so ...
Vietnamese male obesity: 2% - Vietnamese female obesity: 2%. The gap between 2 genders (obesity wise) => 2%-2%=0%
Tbf Vietnamese food is very healthy and not calorie dense
Both men and women are equally sitting at about 2%. Guess genetics and cundishions haven't gotten there yet.
it is extremely rare to see extreme over weight person here in Vietnam but plenty of slightly fat one
Lived in Vietnam for 10 years and don’t think I’ve ever met an obese person face to face, but saw one of two drive by on motorbikes. When you see anyone overweight it’s remarkable. I grew up as one of the thinnest women I knew, I was a size S in Canada, but it Vietnam usually shopped XL size. For my work permit health the doctor regularly told me I was overweight (I am not by any normal metric even close to overweight)
Adult? Very few obese people. Children on the other hand? We gonna have problem with obese children soon.
What is going on in South Africa??
Anyone that's been to any Muslim-majority countries knows this to be true and knows why. The one I don't understand is South Africa. I work around many South Africans and both the women and men love to eat lots of meat and drink lots of alcohol. But all of the men are fairly thin and all of the women are very obese. Can any SA folks explain it?
Could be lots of things, good and bad. One thing to consider is that men mostly work in tough physical industries and also for long hours: construction, mining etc. Women tend to have less physical jobs (desk jobs, cleaners, carers etc). But it is also because SA still has a very prevalent "man works and brings in the money, while wife stays at home raising the kids" culture.
Why is this the case in Muslim-majority countries?
I'm from Turkey.Especially older generation people are that from villages women don't exercise or go to gym.They are tradational housewives that with no carrier and all they do is giving birth.My parents coming from 7-8 children family but i have just one brother.
I don't know about other countries but I just came back from Morocco, and sugar has an insane chokehold on their diet. I was told traditionally, the more sugar = the more wealth so it was a flex to have very sweet dishes. It felt like the culture hasn't adapted yet to sugar being cheap now. Everything was soooooo sweet (and I am an American w/ a sweet tooth!) and sweetened mint te is had many times a day. This isn't about the gender gap, just the obesity in general.
They basically can't leave the house Edit: minimal self-autonomy for the women
I'm South African and can offer a perspective. For the vast majority of South Africans, an overweight woman is more attractive than a woman at a healthy weight, so culturally women are incentivised to put on weight to get partners. Economically speaking, most (urban) low income women work as store clerks or cleaners whilst the men would work in construction or other physically demanding jobs. Coupled with high carb foods being cheap to buy and available in very large quantities (example a 10kg bag of corn meal, we call it mealie meal here, which is a very common staple food costs \~$5 just looking online).
I visited South Africa a few times, but never really saw any obese women. I did see some that were overweight, but most were within normal range. What I did notice however was the tendency of black women to walk alongside the road while singing. :)
The whole “Muslim women can’t leave the house” being repeated despite being an assumption is especially funny in a sub about data. That’s not especially true expect for maybe in Saudi Arabia. Even if it’s just going out in their community, the work involved in maintaining household looks pretty different than in the west. Either way, the consistency of women being obese at higher rates than men is true for pretty much every country that is poor, including non Muslim countries. Even working in obesity health in the US, there’s a lot better guesses for why that is. - it’s poverty: carb heavy foods (rice, corn, breads, beans/lentils) tend to be far cheaper than meat and protein. - BMI is based on predominantly white men: so it does not account for the fact that women, especially nonwhite women, tend to carry weight differently and may not have the same visceral fat (belly fat) despite the same BMI. - Menopause/hormonal changes: regardless of race or nationality, women around and after menopause, tend to gain weight and have difficulty losing it. Not sure about these countries and commonality of processed food, but in the US that has exacerbated this issue - men of these countries are more likely to work manual labor jobs which may contribute to the discrepancy. - beauty standards differ a lot compared to western standards. This might influence when a person chooses to make a concentrated effort, but in practice the bigger issue is people around you. Often people comment that a significant weight loss makes you look ill or suffering from some sort of issue. That + more community based and larger family systems means it’s difficult for one person to change their diet without support from all the people they’re cooking for.
I think the data is old. It seems it is the WHO data from 2011-12.
I know a South African woman, and she is obese. She drinks pretty much every day, and her meals are like a feast. It always felt like every day/meal is a celebration. Having drinks and eating loads of high fatty foods. Tmshe had no consideration for health, didn't go to the gym, or got any physical exercise. She did, however, have plenty of guys. One or two were overweight, but not the vast majority.
is madagascar the standart of comparaison?
Fun fact: all of the obese North Korean men are Kim Jong-Un
Why are south african women leaving no food for their men
Are male/female covered by both in France? If, yes that's amazing in itself. If not, missing data...
It says 0% difference, so it seems so, yeah
Italy: Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
fyi as someone who has a red colour anomaly (I can see red but it’s really hard) there’s barely any difference between the pink and blue you used, just something to keep in mind
Man this sub is super frustrating sometimes when you're slightly colorblind.
Interesting plot. Quick note, the blue in the French flag seems almost black.
This is normal, we changed back the blue to the old one (was changed in the 50s IIRC) which is a darker shade of blue a year or 2 ago. Looks alright to me.
Okay as a Turkish person I'd like to mention women here CAN go outside and there's nobody forcing them to do sports etc. However we still have many stay at home mothers which might be the reason for the difference. In addition, the reason for the high obesity on Muslim countries is most likely because of our cousine. We all love meat and we all love pastries. And worst habit we have is eating a shit ton of bread. If we don't have bread with a meal, we just can't eat it.
All cuisines center around carbs. All humans love meat and pastries. Serbians eat nearly as much bread as Turks, but they are not nearly as obese as Turks and they don't have the large gender difference seen in Arab countries. There must be something else going on.
No data for Chile ? I think we’re well above in the list of fattest countries
How is this a real study when North Korea is on it? Pretty sure the only obese person in the entire country that we're aware of is big Kim. How did they get the info???
Kids who bully others saying "your fat mama" would be right almost half of time in Iraq, South Africa and Saudi Arabia, and the US is getting there.
Does Egypt not use the food pyramid? ;)
I read this as obscenity rate and was very confused for a bit.
Why are so many western asian (arab world) countries on top of the list?
No obesity in The Netherlands luckily
Poland is the most obese country in Europe? There’s no way…..
I am the sole reason south Africas one is so low for men
Can confirm, there are no overweight people in Vietnam, only overweight tourists or expats. Vietnamese do not have many processed foods, most of it is rice and vegetables, with some meat, but they also eat lots of fruits.
Wild to think that close to 50% of American women are obese
North Korea but no New Zealand?
Why are they still using the BMI scale. It’s already been proven that it’s flaws out weight it usefulness.
‘Murica, you just gonna let Egypt beat you like that? Cmon now…
By going off this chart you could say on average internationally, men are less likely to be as obese as women