Most of the rest of the world is where the US was 20-30 years ago when the US certainly had an “obesity pandemic”.

There are 127 countries with an obesity rate higher than 20% (roughly what the US was at 30 years ago).

In nearly every country in the world, your ancestors from 30 years ago would call you fat.

The US is just ahead of the curve for some reason.

Depending on the coutnry, this is somewhat overstated.

For example, here in Europe it's rather clear just by eye (but also borne out in the data) that the increase in obesity here is actually just an increase in age.

Older people (up to a point) tend to be plumper than young people. The rapidly increasing average age in Europe then causes an average increase in obesity.

There’s something to that. Obesity rates do peak in middle age (but they drop after that).

But obesity rates don’t correlate well with average country age, and if you look at childhood obesity rates in Europe they have increased dramatically.

Most European countries have childhood obesity rates close to the US childhood obesity rates in the early 90, many are much higher.

The US has also increased in average age quite a bit as well.

The rest of the developed world is catching up.

While the US is one of the most severe cases (and in particular has a large number of _very_ obese people, making it more _visible_), most of the world does have an obesity problem.