The given chart illustrates the ratio of overweight adults in Japan, Finland, Australia and the USA over a 30-year period.
Overall, what stands out from the graph is that the percentage of obese people grew in all four countries over the entire period. While obesity levels in America and Australia grew significantly, Finland and Japan rose only slightly, with the highest proportion in the USA and the lowest in Japan.
America suffered from the highest level of obesity, with the percentage of overweight people growing from around 17% to 25%, but increased to just over a third in 2000. Likewise, in Australia, obesity levels, which stood at around 9% in 1980, grew by only 2% in the next decade, but skyrocketed to around 24 % by the end of the period.
In contrast, while the number of individuals suffering from the same problem in Japan marginally increased from 3 million in 1980 to 4 million in 2000, the respective figure for Finland experienced a gradual increase from 9 percent to 12 over the same period
