Experimental Fat Loss
The other day I randomly thought about obesity, as is my habit. I remembered that Vietnam had been the country with the lowest obesity back when I wrote a post visualizing obesity vs. diabetes.
I wondered… has it always been the leanest country? And even if so, how has its obesity rate changed? Almost all countries in the world have seen drastic increases in obesity. What about Vietnam?
I went to Our World in Data about obesity and downloaded their obesity rate data set. It contains pretty much any country you can think of, and has obesity rates from 1990-2022.
Since I already had a bunch of graphs & visualizers online, it was simple enough to add another page to my Macro Calculator and I can proudly present to you: Obesity by Country.
Oh, my! Vietnam’s obesity rate has actually exploded in the last 30 years. It went from below 0.2% in 1990 to over 2% in 2022, for an increase of over 10x. This is similar to what the U.S. experienced around 1900 or so, maybe even before that around the time of the Civil War.
