6. Samoa, a group of islands once a part of New Zealand, is the world's sixth fattest nation. Also in the Pacific Islands, 83 percent of its population is obese. (TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images)
Touted as the fairest way to fly, Samoa Air has instituted a new policy whereby passengers are required to pay a fixed price per kilogram that they weigh, rather than paying a fixed price per seat.
For the first time in human history, more people are obese than hungry. It's a fact that has wide implications from the 7-Elevens of Southeast Asia to the debt-stricken countries of Europe and everywhere else in between. GlobalPost investigates a fat, fat planet.
ROME — The stalls laden with fruit and vegetables in Rome's Campo de' Fiori market are a splash of color that signals the delights of the Italian diet. There are trays of Trentino apples, glistening citrus from Campania and jungle-hued varieties of salad leaves grown in market gardens around the capital. Concern is growing, however, that the economic crisis gripping Europe may be changing those shopping and eating habits.
LIMA — “The hardest nut to crack is weight,” says Gabriela Aro, who heads a groundbreaking school meals program based on traditional indigenous ingredients in the Bolivian capital, La Paz. The program targets nutritional problems among 153,000 needy youngsters in 411 public kindergartens and schools in one of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest countries.
JOHANNESBURG — Obesity rates are skyrocketing in sub-Saharan Africa, as in most parts of the world. But here the obesity problem has an unusual and particularly worrying shape. While child hunger has traditionally been the more pressing problem in African countries, researchers say that malnourished, growth-stunted children are turning into overweight adults.
New evidence, published in a very soda-centric edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, indicates that the easiest single way for obese people to lose weight is cutting out soda from their diets—among other rather damning info on the dangers of soda consumption.
The ever-innovative island nation is going nuts for MXP Calorie Shaper Pants, according to the Telegraph.
What's so great about this underwear? They're sprayed with a resin that leaves them rather stiff.
All that resistance adds up to the equivalent of an extra 210 kilocalories burned per week, provided you're a 140-pound man walking 90 minutes per day, according to the Telegraph.
That's the equivalent of one-half liter of beer. I suppose any 140-pound guy who already downs a full liter of beer could just knock off the drinking, keep wearing regular underwear and get double the results.
Or he could just be happy he's only 140 pounds.
Japan is already far thinner than the U.S., according to a 2009 Global Post report from Japan that states that while "Japan has some of the world’s lowest rates of obesity — less than 5 percent, compared to nearly 35 percent for the United States — people here on average have gotten heavier in the past three decades, according to government statistics.
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