Spain is now catching up with the UK...

Figures issued by the Health Ministry in Spain show that the country has a serious problem with the weight of its citizens and that the amount of overweight and obese Spanish people has risen dramatically over the last decade. According to the statistics over 50 percent of adult men and women in Spain are overweight, meaning that they have a body mass index of 25 or even more, and that a quarter of teenagers are either overweight or obese. A similar study done in the year 2005 notes that the weight problem was a few percentage points less and thus there has been a large increase for one year.

The extensive survey that was conducted throughout 2006 looked at the body weight and height of 31,000 Spanish people around the country. The number of men who were seen to be obese is marginally larger than the number of women who were seen to be obese at 15.5% to 15% respectively, but the number of men seen to be overweight was up to 44 percent and number of women who were overweight was 30 percent.

The problem is not confined only to adults as children are also getting more overweight too. From 2005 to 2006 the number of obese children slightly increased from 8.5 percent to 9.1 percent and the amount of overweight children rose slightly from 18.2 percent to 18.5 percent.  Spain is now catching up with the UK as one of the most fat ridden places in the European Union.

Funnily enough, even though the figures prove otherwise, the vast majority of the people of Spain were very positive about the state of their health. In fact almost 70 percent of the people who were interviewed considered that their health was either ‘good’ or ‘very good’.