A friend of mine posted a link on a social networking site, and I decided to dig into it over the weekend, as I needed a break from work and this entire non stop Egypt telecasts. A certain Professor Majid Ezzati of the Imperial College, London along with his team conducted a 28 year research (1980 to 2008) on global obesity trends and published it a few weeks back. If you go to the link, you’ll find the research results on a well designed online dashboard on global BMI (Body mass index) levels etc.Before I say anything else, let me congratulate all of you living in the GCC, you just made it to the top of Professor Ezzati’s list of the fattest people in the world. The GCC ranks among the fattest in the world (With so many bankers (fat cats) in this region, that must have been easy to plot) .But after two decades of analysis the professor and his team have figured that the thinnest people live in Congo and the fattest people live in some pacific island country whose name I cant even pronounce (Nauru), but that’s not the reason for this blog post.
If you dig into the stats of the GCC Region, this is what comes up,
- As per the global ranking Kuwait ranks among the top 10 fattest countries in the world even beating Burgerland United States of America to it.
- Qatar is not that easily beaten and ranks among the 11th fattest country in the world closely followed by United Arab Emirates ranked number 13.
- If you sort the data by sex, Kuwaiti women seem to be fatter than the Kuwaiti men, while Qatari men are fatter than Qatari women.
- The fattest people in the GCC live in Kuwait and the thinnest live in Oman. GCC rankings are as follows (Fattest to thinnest) – Kuwait(29.15), Qatar (28.14), UAE (28.05), Saudi Arabia (27.91), Bahrain (27.82) and Oman (26.24)
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On a global level: Congo has the thinnest people in the world (wonder if it has to do with the fact that you can’t easily find a McDonalds or KFC in Congo), followed by Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Afghanistan (no wonder the afghans seem to be running circles around the NATO security forces)
Europe: The Irish are the fattest Europeans (ok…cant blame them..Irish cream is not exactly made out of low fat milk is it?) and the Italian studs are the thinnest of them all
Asia angle: The Vietnamese and the Indians rank among the top 10 thinnest countries in the world ranked number 9 & 10. I can vouch for the Indians being thin from the angle that Indians discovered the Veggie burger only a few years back, but Vietnam…anyone has a theory on that one?
As always, am wondering how the government PR spin doctors, will spin this data and make it sound positive, if they ever come across it. Who knows, tomorrow’s road show opening line or newspaper headlines could be – “D^&% is such a great city to make money that in no time we’ll turn you all into fat cats and now its been substantially proven, another reason why you should buy into our Sukuk!!!
Thank you
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On a global level: Congo has the thinnest people in the world (wonder if it has to do with the fact that you can’t easily find a McDonalds or KFC in Congo), followed by Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Afghanistan (no wonder the afghans seem to be running circles around the NATO security forces)
Europe: The Irish are the fattest Europeans (ok…cant blame them..Irish cream is not exactly made out of low fat milk is it?) and the Italian studs are the thinnest of them all
Asia angle: The Vietnamese and the Indians rank among the top 10 thinnest countries in the world ranked number 9 & 10. I can vouch for the Indians being thin from the angle that Indians discovered the Veggie burger only a few years back, but Vietnam…anyone has a theory on that one?
As always, am wondering how the government PR spin doctors, will spin this data and make it sound positive, if they ever come across it. Who knows, tomorrow’s road show opening line or newspaper headlines could be – “D^&% is such a great city to make money that in no time we’ll turn you all into fat cats and now its been substantially proven, another reason why you should buy into our Sukuk!!!
Thank you
