FREAKY FACTS... Weighty matters

1) Earth is getting weighed down with big people, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures. It says there are 1.6 billion overweight people and 400 million who are obese. If the weight-gain epidemic continues, the organisation predicts that by 2015, about 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.
2) New Zealand adults are tipping the scales towards being too big, with 60% of men and 40% of women deemed as overweight. Of these, 20% are obese.
3) The most obese nations of the world are in the western Pacific. In Nauru, 80% of men are obese and 78% of women. Tonga is next, with 47% of men and 70% of women recorded as obese; and in Samoa the obesity rates are men (33%) and women (63%).
4) In New Zealand, Pacific island children are the heaviest with more than 60% either overweight or obese. Overall, nearly one-third of Kiwi kids are overweight (21%) or obese (10%).
5) The WHO defines overweight as having a body mass index (BMI) of more than 25, and obesity as having a BMI of 30 or more. BMI is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres (kg/m2).