A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- the first to compare American obesity data with another country -- finds (perhaps unsurprisingly) that American adults have a higher rate of obesity than their Canadian counterparts.
And the gap is quite disparate. According to obesity data from 2007 to 2009, an estimated 34 percent of Americans are obese compared to 24 percent of Canadians -- a 10 percent difference that further exposes the severity of America's struggle with obesity.
The study considered racial demographics and gender, and in each instance Americans were bigger. The percentage of obese American men was 8 percent higher than that of Canada (32.6 percent to 24.3 percent), and the obesity gap in women was even higher (36.2 percent to 23.9 percent).
This is not necessarily good news for Canada; the country has seen an increase in obesity since the late 1980's. Interestingly, between 2007 and 2009 obesity among young and middle-aged Canadian women closely mirrored that studied in U.S. women 20 years earlier.
By charting Body Mass Index (BMI) at different heights, the CDC outlined three classes of obesity:
Class 1: BMI of 30.0-34.9 kg/m2
Class 2: BMI of 35.0-39.9 kg/m2
Class 3: BMI of 40.0 kg/m2 and higher
For more information, view the full CDC report.