If Americans are overweight, and overweight by greater amounts, than people in most other nations, and many diseases and disorders are tied to obesity, is the incidence of those conditions lower in other countries?

It stands to reason that if Americans’ lifestyle and widespread chronic obesity are a severe health risk, and people elsewhere do not have the same level of risk, there should be lower national averages for those weight-affected conditions in other countries. Is this in fact the case? Can we say, for example, that France has lower rates of diabetes or Sweden has a lower incidence of heart disease?

And if the U.S. is above average in those ways, who is it that’s below average so that the average stays at a lower rate than ours?