Obesity in Sweden has been increasingly cited as a major health issue in recent years. Sweden is the 90th fattest country in the world. In 2009, the number of people who are considered overweight or obese had not increased for the first time in 70 years.

Claude Marcus Claude Nils Gustaf Marcus (born August 19, 1952 in Stockholm, Sweden) is a pediatrician at Karolinska University Hospital and Professor at the Karolinska Institute, most notably renowned for his research relating to childhood obesity. Career ...

, a leading Swedish nutrition expert from the

Karolinska Institutet The Karolinska Institute (KI; sv, Karolinska Institutet; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden. The Karolinska Institute is consist ...

, stated that one solution is to introduce a

fat tax A fat tax is a tax or surcharge that is placed upon fattening food, beverages or on overweight individuals. It is considered an example of Pigovian taxation. A fat tax aims to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the economic costs of obe ...

Folksam Folksam is one of the largest insurance companies in Sweden. The company headquarters are located in Stockholm. Folksam consists of the two mutual insurance companies Folksam sak and Folksam liv. Folksam is today a Swedish insurance company only, a ...

refused to insure a 5-year-old girl from

Orust Orust () is an island in western Sweden, and Sweden's third largest island. In 2014 Statistics Sweden declared it to instead be the fourth largest island, under a definition which adds artificial canals to the possible bodies of water surrounding ...

. The insurance company refused her insurance based on "serious overweight/obesity". A report showed that children whose parents were better educated had a lower chance of becoming overweight.

Cause

Lack of exercise along with sugar-sweetened foods and drinks have caused one out of six five-year-olds in Sweden to be overweight or obese. The breakdown is 12.9% of children are considered

overweight Being overweight or fat is having more body fat than is optimally healthy. Being overweight is especially common where food supplies are plentiful and lifestyles are sedentary. , excess weight reached epidemic proportions globally, with mo ...

and 4.3% are considered

obese Obesity is a medical condition, sometimes considered a disease, in which excess body fat has accumulated to such an extent that it may negatively affect health. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI)—a person's we ...

Effects

Several studies in Sweden shown that obese men tend to have a lower

sperm count A semen analysis (plural: semen analyses), also called seminogram or spermiogram, evaluates certain characteristics of a male's semen and the sperm contained therein. It is done to help evaluate male fertility, whether for those seeking pregna ...

, fewer rapidly mobile

sperm Sperm is the male reproductive cell, or gamete, in anisogamous forms of sexual reproduction (forms in which there is a larger, female reproductive cell and a smaller, male one). Animals produce motile sperm with a tail known as a flagellum, whi ...

and fewer progressively motile sperm compared to normal-weight men.

Programs

School nurses in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

Uppsala County Uppsala County ( sv, Uppsala län) is a county or ''län'' on the eastern coast of Sweden, whose capital is the city of Uppsala. It borders the counties of Dalarna, Stockholm, Södermanland, Västmanland, Gävleborg, and the Baltic Sea. Provi ...

, will be prescribing exercise to teenage children. The prescribed exercise can be anything from participating in a sport to walking. Spaces will be available for the participants.

Forbes ranking 2007

Source: Forbes.com

References

{{Europe topic, Obesity in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

Health in Sweden