Analytics, EU – Baltic States, Health, Latvia, Society

Malta, where 26% of the adult population are either overweight or obese, is the only EU member states with even higher proportion of overweight or obese people than Latvia, the statistics for 2014 show.

Hungary is the country with the third highest proportion of overweight or obese people (21.2%), followed by Estonia (20.4%), Great Britain (20.1%), Czech Republic (19.3%), Slovenia (19.2%), Croatia (18.7%), Finland (18.3%) and Lithuania (17.3%).

For both women and men aged 18 years and over, the lowest proportions of the population considered to be obese or overweight were recorded in Romania (9.4%), Italy (10.7%), Netherlands (13.3%), as well as Belgium and Sweden (14% in both countries).

Across the EU, 15.9% of adults have problems with excessive weight, including 16.1% of men and 15.7% of women. The problem plagues 5.7% of the bloc's young population 22.1% of the elderly.

Eurostat's data does not include statistics on Ireland.

According to the methodology used by Eurostat people whose body mass index (a measure of a person’s weight relative to their height) exceeds 30 points is considered obese. A BMI in the range of 25-30 is considered to be the pre-obesity stage, and people whose BMI exceeds 25 points are seen as overweight. Body mass in the range of 18.5-25 points is considered to be within the norm.