Most Europeans are overweight and rising rates of obesity threaten to undermine the region’s reputation for having a population that’s thinner on average than Americans, a new report showed.
Turkey and the U.K. are among Europe’s most overweight countries, the World Health Organization said Tuesday in a report. The United Nations body said it’s declaring an “obesity epidemic” after finding that 59% of adults in Europe had a high body-mass index in 2016.
Obesity is among the leading causes of death and disability and is responsible for about 1.2 million fatalities each year, accounting for 13% of mortality in Europe. No country in the region is on track to reduce obesity rates by 2025, the WHO report showed, predicting obesity will overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable cancers in the next decades.
