The list for the year 2009, is led by Kuwait and the United States and comprises countries in the Middle East, Oceania and Latin America, with Mexico in the fifth in the world, Venezuela and Guatemala in the sixth to the tenth.

In 2009, 38.7% of those over fifteen years were considered obese in the U.S., compared to 31.8% from Mexico, Venezuela 29.6% and 27.5% of Guatemala.

According to the study, Latin American obesity rates are still at levels well below those of developed countries like the U.S., although that difference will become smaller because the obesity figures are increasing in the region.

Prospects for 2020 suggest, moreover, that six of the countries with higher obesity in the world are in Latin America: Venezuela, Guatemala, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Mexico.

Of these, Venezuela is the third-most obese people in the world, with 41.6%, and Mexico will be in tenth place, with 35.3%.

Latin America also has high levels of overweight population indicating that obesity trends continue.

In this regard, Chile is the country with more overweight people in the region and the second in the world. In this country, there was a 44.7% of the population over 15 years were overweight in 2009.

The concepts of obesity and overweight are different and, therefore, India is not among the countries with the highest number of obese.

Obesity rates have increased considerably since 1980, when it began to spread fast food consumption in Latin America and is expected to figures affected by this disease continues to rise at the eating habits point to an increased consumption of food containing high saturated fat levels.

Fast food is often cheaper than traditional food as the poor are increasingly consuming these products.

Increased access to food with high levels of saturated fats and increasing urbanization means more sedentary lifestyles contribute to increasing the numbers of obesity in the future, the report said.

The parameter most used to measure overweight and obesity is the body mass index (BMI). In this sense, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines overweight as a BMI equal to or greater than 25 and obesity as a BMI equal to or greater than 30 reference thresholds used for individual assessment.

WHO estimates indicate that in 2005 worldwide was about 1600 million adults (15 years) were overweight and at least 400 million adults were obese.

In addition, WHO has estimated that, given current trends, by 2015, approximately 2300 million adults are overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.