Obesity rises in Sweden in last 3 years
Reported January 09, 2008
Obesity among women in Sweden rose by almost a third in the last three years, a study by the Swedish National Institute of Public Health has revealed.
The number of women with a so-called body mass index, or BMI, of more than 30 rose to 490,000 this year, compared with 378,000 in 2004, the institute said in a statement on its Web site Dec. 17. That represents 14 percent of Sweden’s total female population, compared with 11 percent three years ago, it said. The number of obese men remained at 11 percent of the total, the study said.
“It is a worrisome development, and it looks as if we have a migration from people with a normal weight to overweight and from overweight people to obese among women,” Gunnar Johansson, a diet expert at the institute, said in the statement.
A normal BMI, a measure to express the relationship of weight to height, runs from 18.5 to 24.9. People with a BMI of more than 25 are considered overweight, while those with a BMI of more than 30 are considered obese.
Forty-two percent of Swedish men and 26 percent of Swedish women are overweight, according to the study, which polled 10,000 Swedes age 16 to 84.