Canadians Are Catching Up With America’s Fatness

A new study of the world's rich countries says that America's fatness levels will increase from the current 70% to more than 75% by the year 2020, but other nations are working hard to catch up -- including our neighbors in Canada (6th fattest) and Mexico (2nd place). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which studies the gross habits and economies of "rich nations," only a few Asian countries will have any non-obese people a decade from now. (Many people in poor countries will continue to starve, however.)

The AP reports from Paris, where everybody is slim and sexy:

Franco Sassi, the OECD senior health economist who authored the report, blamed the usual suspects for the increase.

"Food is much cheaper than in the past, in particular food that is not particularly healthy, and people are changing their lifestyles, they have less time to prepare meals and are eating out more in restaurants," said Sassi, a former London School of Economics lecturer who worked on the report for three years.

That plus the fact that people are much less physically active than in the past means that the ranks of the overweight have swelled to nearly 70 percent in the U.S. this year from well under 50 percent in 1980, according to the OECD.

Experts caution that once America's population of ginormous hippos crosses the "three out of four people" stage, more and more of America's remaining skinny people will be eaten, as the fat people now have the means to easily block all exits to a building. [ AP / CTV ]