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Norwegians among rich world’s slimmest: OECD

Norwegians are amongst the world's slimmest people, with the lowest consumption of alcohol in Europe, and the healthiest pensioners in any country.

Published: 22 November 2013 10:50 CET

Norwegians among rich world's slimmest: OECD

Norwegians skiing the 38km Skarverennet race - Christian Haugen

Only 10 percent of Norwegians over 15 are classed as obese, according to a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), making the country’s thinner than every other country in Europe except Switzerland.

Norwegian children, meanwhile, were slimmer even than the Swiss, with just 14 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys classed as obese.

The country’s clean-living citizens consumed just 6.6 litres of alcohol per capita per year, the lowest rate in Europe. The French knocked back almost twice as much, with an average consumption of 12.6 litres.

The healthy living appears to pay dividends. Norwegian women aged 65 can expect 16 more years of healthy life and Norwegian men 14.5 years, putting the country ahead of every other country in the survey.

The annual collection of statistics, Health at a Glance, was published this week.

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Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU

Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals.

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent).

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages.

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year.

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent).

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included.

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent.

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much.

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