Data Blog

Demographic Factors

Over the past decade, when comparing men and women, there has been little to no difference in obesity between them. For both, the percentage of people that are obese has remained more or less unchanged. While obesity rates increase with age, it seems to level off around middle-age (Table 1).

Income adequacy takes into account the number of people living in a household and the amount of income available to support them. Some of the factors that contribute to obesity (like diet, sleep, mental health and well-being, etc.) are impacted by income level (Table 2 and Table 3).

While the overall rate of obesity among Canadian adults is 28.2%, it can vary a lot based on where someone lives (e.g. health region) [see map].

Lifestyle Factors

Eating Behaviours

• Canadian adults think their eating habits are “very good” to “good”, and the majority of them eat their main meal at the family table (92.4%; CCHS 2012 Food Skills Rapid Response). However, most adults do not use the Canada’s Food Guide when doing their grocery shopping (69.5%; CCHS 2012 Food Skills Rapid Response) yet many have habits that help them make healthy choices. For instance, most use a grocery list (73.2%) or read nutrition labels (63.3%) [CCHS 2012 Food Skills Rapid Response]. In general, normal weight adults eat healthier (41.7%) than those who are obese (34.2%) [Table 2]. That said, only 39.3% of Canadian adults actually maintain a healthy diet (Table 2).
• Current health advice suggests that drinking fewer sugary drinks is part of a healthy lifestyle that contributes to a healthier weight ^Footnote 2. Although only a small percent of adults (12.8%) say they drink one or more sugar-sweetened drinks per day, specifically regular soft drinks, sports drinks or fruit-flavoured drinks (Table 2), the sales of new sugary drinks like energy drinks, flavoured waters, and sweetened coffees have increased dramatically in Canada with sweetened coffees alone increasing 579% between 2004 and 2015 ^Footnote 3. Drinking sugar-sweetened drinks is higher among younger adult Canadians but this decreases with age (Table 2).

Activity Behaviours

• Being physically active is important to health, yet only 22.2% of Canadian adults are active enough (Table 2). In fact, the majority of Canadians’ waking hours (9.8 hours per day) are spent on activities that are sedentary (which means that they require very little movement) such as sitting at a desk or watching television (Table 2). Only a small percentage of adults take active forms of transportation, like walking or cycling, to get to and from their workplace (19.8% walk and 4.1% bike; CCHS 2014).
• Over the past few decades, as the amount of sleep adults get has gone down (from 8.0 hours per night in 1992 ^Footnote 4 to 7.2 hours per night in 2013-2014; Table 2), obesity has gone up ^Footnote 5. Current research shows that 64.5% of Canadian adults do get adequate sleep ^Footnote 6, but this can vary by age group (Table 2).

Psychosocial Factors

A person’s mental state and social relationships can play a part in the development of obesity, but can also be affected by excess weight ^Footnote 7, ^Footnote 8. At all ages, there is widespread discrimination towards those considered obese ^Footnote 6. Binge eating, which can cause weight gain, has been linked with depression and lower self-esteem, and is often used as a way of coping with stress ^Footnote 8. Among Canadian adults, a higher number of obese adults report being depressed or having a mood disorder (11.0%) compared to overweight (7.0%) or normal weight (6.9%) adults (Table 3).

Your identity is how you see yourself, your appearance, abilities and uniqueness. Obesity can have an impact on this. Obese adults report feeling happy less often (93.0%) and are less likely to report being in very good or excellent health (45.1%) than adults who are not obese (95.1% and 68.3%) [Table 3]. However, when looking at a person’s outlook on life, both normal weight and obese adults report similar feelings about their sense of community (62.4% and 58.1%) and that they had trusting relationships (95.7% and 95.4%) (Table 3). Interestingly, a higher number of overweight adults report feeling a sense of community (71.1%) and that they had trusting relationships (96.3%) compared to obese or normal weight adults (Table 3).