Don't look now, but we're just about a month away from being done with the gluttony of Christmas, meaning it's about time we start thinking of New Year's resolutions.
As we consider taking a long look at ourselves in order to figure out what we need to do better, a recent Reddit post on the r/todayilearned subreddit just may provide some inspiration — because if you live in North America, you're officially a member of the most overweight population on the planet.
It links to the Wikipedia page on human body weight and confirms that, according to the data cited, 73.9 percent of North Americans are overweight. That's just shy of three-quarters of all people. It's a shocking number and becomes even more surprising in contrast with the rest of the world's population.
Although the data is from 2005, it's the most recent we can find that deals with people on every continent (along with areas like Oceania and the Caribbean).
While we can see that every part of the world has its fair share of overweight individuals — Asia, the lowest figure on the list, is still nearly a quarter overweight — North America has the lead by far. Oceania sits in second place, while Latin America and Europe are the only other regions that are over 50 percent.
The fact that North America is an overweight population is hardly news, but there's something about seeing it in stark contrast with other parts of the world that brings an uneasy feeling. Data varies, and of course, these 2005 numbers deal with the entire continent of North America — but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 73.6 of adults in the U.S. are overweight. This lines up pretty well with the 2005 data on all of North America.
This Redditor provided some excellent information on how the food that's marketed to us — particularly to children — gets people started on a cycle of bad nutrition and high sugar from a young age. It's tough to make substantive changes when sugary, nutritionally-sparse food is all you really know.
The OP's story of weight gain just kind of happening, and then continuing unabated, is probably familiar to many of us. If there's a plus side to seeing this grim data, it may just be the fact that it inspires a few of us to make healthy changes in our lives.
