Yes, we are fat.

I was in Zurich a year or so ago. I had only one meeting Friday morning and it ended early. So, I took a long walk around town. First a stroll on Bahnhofstrasse then along the river Limat, around the lake, over the bridge into the old town and back to the hotel. In all, a walk of several hours. After a while I noticed, I do not know why, a lack in my surroundings.

Where were all the corpulent people? Not one did I encounter. Not one. It was early in the year, before the time to see many tourists, but even the foreigners were thin, at least, by my standards. Once planted in my brain, the difference was startling. Why was everybody so not overweight? A few rotund women, nothing more and even they were not fat.

Online I went. Was there a major difference between countries? Had I noticed something?

The answer was a resounding yes. Some of the statistics available online are a little out of date, but the overall result is the same. We in the US are the gold medalists, with some 30% plus of the population classified as obese. The Swiss come in at the bottom of the pile with 8%, only ahead of Japan and Korea, both of which must have poor diets, by our standards. Japan and Korea have some 3% of their population classified as obese.

John Oram