UAE has world's highest ratio of couch potatoes

People in the UAE enjoy a high quality of life, which has turned a majority of us into couch potatoes, ranking the country quite high globally for obesity ratio among its residents.

Going by the newly released figures of global research consultancy TNS, 86 per cent of UAE residents are hooked to their TV sets every day – which is the highest in the world.

A study conducted last year by Dubai’s health authorities said that by the end of 2016, half the UAE’s population will be obese, with boys and girls as young as 18 years old suffering from diabetes and hypertension.

The UAE along with other Gulf countries have been placed among the countries with the highest population of obese people.

In order to encourage residents to lose weight, the local authority launched incentives offering them a gramme of gold for every kilogramme of weight shed in a month for the second consecutive year in 2014.

According to TNS, Spaniards are the second highest TV watchers worldwide, followed by those in Italy (82 per cent), UK (80 per cent), Australia (79 per cent), and Germany and India (78 per cent each). Globally, 75 per cent of global population watches television daily on an average.

Matthew Froggatt, Chief Development Officer at TNS, said: “In a world where multi-tasking is the norm, the context in which we watch TV is rapidly changing – it isn’t just on the sofa at home with no other digital distractions around us. Instead, the growth in screen-stacking and online TV viewing is huge, particularly in the Asian markets, driven by a growing demand for content among viewers.”

According to an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study, 2.1 billion people globally were either overweight or obese last year.

It’s not just the television but other digital gadgets such as computer, tablets and smartphones also are playing a role to some extent to make the UAE resident a couch potato.

Thanks to the advanced telecom technology by the local operators and high mobile penetration, around 15 per cent of UAE residents watch online videos daily either on their personal computers, smartphones or tablets. The percentage is nearly half of the global average but it’s expected to rise with the new generation becoming increasingly addicted to gadgets.

Globally, Russians lead with 44 per cent of people watching online video every day – either PC, mobile or tablet, followed by China, Italy and Singapore at 33 per cent; Hong Kong at 32 per cent; and Spain at 28 per cent.

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