More than 60 % of Canadians overweight

QMI agency

Tuesday, 1 August 2017 21:52

UPDATE
Tuesday, 1 August 2017 21:52

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OTTAWA – More than 60 % of Canadians are overweight and more than one-quarter of the population is obese, show data from Statistics Canada revealed Tuesday.

According to the data collected by the Survey on the health of canadian communities, 61.3% of Canadians have a body mass index (BMI) higher than normal, 26.7% of which suffer from obesity.

So these are 9 553 700 Canadians who are in a state of surplus of weight and 7 375 000 who are obese. Only 36.1% of the 27 643 000 citizens considered not the study have a weight considered normal, while 2 % of the population is underweight.

With 59.6 % of people are overweight or obese, Quebecers are not faring slightly better than the Canadians taken as a whole. 37.2% of the 6 570 400 residents of la Belle Province considered by the study have a BMI considered as normal.

More and bigger

In comparison, during the first Survey on the health of canadian communities by 2004, 59.1% of Canadians were overweight, of which 23.1 per cent who were obese.

The same phenomenon is observable in Quebec, where 56.3% of the citizens had a BMI that is too high, compared with 41.5 % of Quebecers who had an ideal body weight.

Good news for the children

In children 5 to 17 years, 69.1% of Canadians are at an ideal weight. However, 30.9 percent of them are in situation of overweight, including 12% who are classified as obese.

This is a significant improvement since 2004, while 34.3% of Canadian youth were overweight, of which 13.3 percent were obese.

The BMI is calculated by dividing the weight in kilograms of a person by the square of their height in meters. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.99 a is considered normal by the world Health Organization.