Mexico overtakes America as world’s fattest country

Mexico overtakes America as world’s fattest country, America is no longer the fattest major country on Earth.

Fat chance, you may say. But Mexico has surpassed its neighbour in the global battle of the bulge stakes, a new health league table shows.

While Mexico’s traditional diet of tortillas, tacos, beans and chilli is high in fibre and vitamins, it is also laden with calories and hard to burn off for those leading a sedentary lifestyle.

And with incomes rising in Mexico, where more and more people are moving to big cities for work, it seems the country has developed a taste for US culinary favourites – cheap junk food.

Almost a third of adult Mexicans (32.8 per cent) are obese compared with 31.8 per cent of Americans, according to a study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Diabetes and cardiovascular illness are increasing, plus-size clothing fills the racks in stores but Mexicans keep eating. And obesity is cutting across class lines. In a country where half the population is poor, malnourishment is also feeding the problem, according to physician Abelardo Avila of Mexico’s National Nutrition Institute.

‘In the poor classes, we have obese parents and malnourished children,’ he said. ‘The worst thing is the children are becoming programmed for obesity. It’s a very serious epidemic.’

Mexicans consume more soft drinks per person than any other country and there have been warnings about its failing fight with the flab. In 2011, Mexico revealed it had the highest rate of child obesity in the world.

Official figures show 28 per cent of five to nine-year-old and 38 per cent of those aged ten to 19 are obese.

While Mexico is fattest major nation, it is way behind the Micronesian island of Nauru, where 71.1 per cent of adults are obese, suggests the UN study.

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