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Hogtown, Appropriately
Despite the fact that it’s damn near impossible to find an unoccupied treadmill at the gym after work, the Toronto Sun is reporting that a large portion of Torontonians—one-third, in fact—are overweight. More disturbing (except perhaps to a small but dedicated group of fetishists) is the fact that one in nine Torontonians is considered obese. In total, 40.4% of Torontonians are considered to be over their acceptable weight, based on the Body Mass Index, or BMI. You can calculate your own BMI here, but we warn you that the results will likely make you depressed, then scared, and then probably hungry.
The findings come from a report released yesterday by Statistics Canada called the Canadian Community Health Survey, a treasure-trove of information for people who just really love reliable health data, and graphs. And footnotes. The Sun story notes that roughly 42% of respondents in the City of Toronto health region described themselves as physically active, although it’s not known how many of those were lying to impress the people administering the survey.
The survey also noted that a surprisingly large number of Canadians (4.1 million, or 15% of Canadians aged 12 and over) did not have a regular medical doctor. In fact, 1 in 15 Canadians reported that they could not even find a regular doctor in 2007. Information about alcohol consumption and its health effects was not featured in the study, so Torontoist is just going to assume that having an extra beer or two after dinner is still totally cool.
Photo by füthart.