Fat bottom girls all the rage in England

Britain now officially has the most lard buckets in Europe. The European Union has released their Eurostat yearbook for 2007 with the breakdown of the latest data on everything from health, population and leisure to industry and energy use in the 27 EU countries.

One of the sections picked up by a lot of the press today has been the UK’s position (actually its only stats for England) on the overweight and obese charts compared to the rest of Europe. 23% of women in England are now classed as obese, the highest percentage ahead of the Germans at 21.7% with the Dutch and the Italians being the slimmest. With the men only the Maltese edge ahead of the English (22.3%) on the obese chart while the Romanians (7.7%) are carrying the least excess weight among men. Overall 61% of English people are classed as overweight or obese. The government’s hope that getting the 2012 Olympics would inspire everyone to get fit obviously hasn’t kicked in yet.

Among some of the other interesting data in the Eurostat report was the home internet access across Europe up to 2005. Holland lead the way with 74%, followed by Denmark 72%, Sweden 71%, Germany 57% and the UK 55%. Maybe unsurprisngly warmer Mediterranean countries had a lower usage at home with Spain 28%, Italy 24% and Greece 14% able to get online in their casas.

Looking at the European population, the UK has the fourth highest population density in the EU only behind Malta, Holland and Belgium and another surprising stat is their population projections for the EU up to 2050. 15 countries are predicted to have less people in 2050 than they do today while most of the rest will maintain similar numbers to what they currently have. Places like Germany are projected to have a big drop from around 82million people today to 74million in 2050, likewise Italy going from 58million to 52million. The only EU countries predicted to get a noticeable increase are the UK, 60million to 64million, and France, 60 to 65million. Surely at some point people are going to realise there’s more space on continental Europe.