Nothing more clearly demonstrates the diversity (and madness) of the modern world than an infographic showing how many Calories each country eats per person.

Throughout the world, 600 million people are obese . (Paradoxically, we also live at a time where 805 million people are chronically undernourished.) Obesity used to be a problem limited to Western countries, however it is fast becoming a concern for Asian countries too.

Looking at this data, it is perhaps unsurprising that obesity has reached epidemic levels in many countries. The average man needs just 2,500 Calories a day, while the average woman needs 2,000 – however we see the vast majority of the Western countries are massively exceeding this.

Austria topped the list, averaging a whopping 3,769 Calories each day. This was closely followed by the United States, Turkey and Belgium (AKA the land of chocolate).

The group behind the infographic also present data showing the increase in Calories since between 1961 and 2011 to demonstrate how our eating habits have developed.

The information is from a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) called Health at a Glance 2015 that looks at global trends of the health, diet and medical care of certain countries. The data was then visualized by Recovery Brands .

However, only members of the OECD were included in this study, so the vast majority of Africa, Asia and parts of South America are not represented.

Image credit: Recovery Brands/OECD

Image credit: Recovery Brands/OECD

Main image credit: rob_rob2001/Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)