And ... the award for the ugliest & the fattest people goes to ... ( Body Beautiful-I )

Two press reports ( extracts) - without comment:

 

Report#1

 

Wed Nov 11, 2009, 

LONDON (Reuters) -  

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  Britons are among the ugliest people in the world, according to a dating website that says it only allows "beautiful people" to join.
• Fewer than one in eight British men and just three in 20 women who have applied to BeautifulPeople.com have been accepted...
• Existing members of the "elite dating site" rate how attractive potential members are over a 48 hour period, after applicants upload a recent photo and personal profile.

• Swedish men have proved the most successful, with 65 percent being accepted, while Norwegian women are considered the most beautiful with 76 percent accepted, the website said.
• The way that BeautifulPeople.com accepts new members is simple. A potential member applies with a photo and a brief profile. Over 48 hours, existing members of the opposite sex vote whether or not to admit them....
• Options are: "Yes definitely," "Hmm yes, O.K," "Hmm no, not really" and "No definitely not."
• The site was founded in 2002 in Denmark and went live across the globe last month. Since then, the site has rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries, admitting just 360,000 new members.

• "I would say Britain is stumbling because they don't spend as much time polishing up their appearance and they are letting themselves down on physical fitness," Beautiful People managing director Greg Hodge said. "Next to Brazilian and Scandinavian beauties, British people just aren't as toned or glamorous."
• Only the male Russian and Polish applicants fared worse than British men, although Russian women had a 44 percent acceptance rate. Polish women did not appear in the table.
• German applicants were slated for offering up unflattering photographs, which may have hindered their acceptance rates at 15 percent for men and 13 percent for women, the lowest rate in their category.
• "German men and women aren't faring well, but they are submitting stern images, they need to soften up," Hodge said
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Report#2

 

It's a big (fat)world  , after all.

By Laurie Cunningham — Special to GlobalPost

Updated: November 26, 2009

 CHICAGO — 

If you tend to pack on a few kilograms over the holidays, blame it on globalization. .... In countries around the world, waistlines are expanding so rapidly that health experts recently coined a term for the epidemic: globesity.

• The common fat-o-meter among nations is body mass index (BMI), a calculation based on a person’s height and weight.The World Health Organization defines “overweight” as an individual with a BMI of 25 or more and “obese” as someone with a BMI of 30 or higher.
• Today, one in three of the world’s adults is overweight and one in 10 is obese.
  

•  By 2015, WHO estimates the number of chubby adults will balloon to 2.3 billion — equal to the combined populations of China, Europe and the U.S.
• ...... In the past 50 years, more of us have started driving to work instead of walking, opening a box of mac ‘n cheese instead of cooking, pushing computer keys instead of plows and taking the elevator rather than the stairs.
• “The combination of these factors is driving obesity all over the world ......., what’s really alarming is that it’s not just the middle aged, it’s children and adolescents. That’s new.”
• In honor of Thanksgiving, a U.S. holiday dedicated to eating until we can’t breathe, we decided to take a look at the Top 10 Fattest Countries in the world, based on national health surveys WHO compiled between 2000 and 2008.

• Yes, it's a big world after all:        
• 1) American Samoa, 93.5 percent (of population that's overweight).  Since World War II, an explosion of obesity on the islands has corresponded with a rise in migration to the U.S., New Zealand, France and Australia. That began to change dietary habits as family members abroad introduced those back home to Western eating and sent money home, giving locals the means to buy more food.
• 2) Kiribati, 81.5 percent. Between 1964 and 2001, food imports to the least developed Pacific nations, such as Kiribati, which comprises 33 islands clustered around the equator, increased six-fold, ....leading to a huge influx in fatty food and processed meat, such as Spam and mutton flaps (fatty sheep scraps), often sold at lower prices than native food.
• 3) U.S., 66.7 percent . In the early 1960s, 24 percent of Americans were overweight.
  

• Today, two-thirds of Americans are too fat, and the numbers on the scale keep going up. Health experts attribute the rise to an over-production of oil, fat and sugar — the result of government farm subsidies started in the 1970s that made it much cheaper to manufacture products like high fructose corn syrup, a common ingredient in processed foods. 
• “The .. food companies seek new ways to market to the public. Obesity was collateral damage.”
  

• 4) Germany, 66.5 percent . When Germany found out that it was the fattest nation in Europe, health experts blamed the usual suspects: beer, fatty foods and lack of physical activity. ....... Germans are suffering from an easy availability of junk food and more sedentary jobs and lifestyles. As part of the government’s campaign to reduce obesity levels by 2020, it has launched programs to serve more fruits and vegetables in public schools.
• 5) Egypt, 66 percent. ...In the 1960s, Egypt produced enough food to feed its people a steady diet of red meat, poultry, lentils, maize and dairy products. But by the 1980s, the population had outgrown food production, leading to an increase in food imports that created poorer eating habits. Obesity among Egyptian women is particularly high, often attributed to cultural taboos on women exercising or playing sports.

• 6) Bosnia-Herzegovina, 62.9 percent.   Once considered a problem only in high-income countries, obesity is dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries like Bosnia-Herzegovina, where smoking, drinking and eating unhealthy foods spiked during the war that ravaged the country from 1992 to 1995. Those living just above the poverty line ...... are gaining weight the fastest, partly because of the tendency to fill up on cheap processed foods high in calories and low on nutritional value.

• 7) New Zealand, 62.7 percent.  In a study at the University of Otago, researchers found that how much time New Zealand children spend watching television is a better predictor of obesity than what they eat or how much they exercise. 
• The study found that 41 percent of the children who were overweight by age 26 were those who had watched the most TV. 
• Television is not the only reason New Zealanders are gaining weight, but it’s one modern development often cited for growing childhood obesity. 
• 8) Israel, 61.9 percent. In the past 30 years, the number of obese Israelis has tripled....... Like in most developed countries, flab is most prevalent among Israelis with less education, with Jewish women with college degrees having the lowest levels of obesity and Arab women with basic education having the highest.
• 9) Croatia, 61.4 percent.  Croatia, where cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death, is also a victim of the globalization of the food market, which tends to suppress traditional diets as cheaper processed foods from the U.S. and Europe flood store shelves.
• It’s no wonder that a Croatian charity announced in June that it had created the world’s largest pair of jeans — the size of six tennis courts — stitched together from 8,023 donated pairs of jeans.
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• 10) United Kingdom, 61 percent.  Last month, "The Observer" ... reported that the heaviest man in the world was not in the U.S., but a 48-year-old Brit living in low-incoming housing in Ipswich “eating takeaways and playing computer games.” His weight: 980 pounds ( or 445 kgs) . 

• British bellies are expanding for the same reasons as everywhere else. A recent survey, however, ranked (poorly)  in physical exercise, leading Health Secretary Andy Burnham to comment, "We're really in danger of being known as the best in the world for watching sport, but one of the worst for getting out there and doing it for ourselves."
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