So, since a second McDonald's has opened in Tartu we now have the 3rd most overweight women. Compare this to the report you wrote in July this year, with the headline "Estonia: Europe's Slimmest Women, Study Finds". What gives? Just clicking on the second article under "See Also" shows there must have been quite a dramatic swing. Shouldn't there be an investigation? Either into the dramatic raise of obesity in this country, or into the use of pointless "studies" as attention grabbing headlines in journalism.

@EpiphanyG: So you just read the headlines and never bother with the rest? The story expressly says what the two different studies looked at.

By default, I do not see a discrepancy in the different studies. It may well be the case that 20.5% exceeding the Body Mass Index (BMI) by 30, meanwhile others are not overweight at all, or even underweighted. It is the same with 'average' and 'median' wages that will lead to different results. I specifically mention the wage term, because I see here analogies with the weights. McDonlads in Estonia is more expensive than in the UK or in Germany, meanwhile the 'median' wages are significantly lower in Estonia than in the other countries mentioned. Hence, it is pure luxury in Estonia to go to McDonalds(tm) on a daily base to eat so many burgers until you exceed the Body Mass Index (BMI) by 30 (and that must be quite a lot (unless you suffer from a heavy genetical obesity). As far as I've seen, the cousin of an average family in Estonia is rather homemade delicacies than a daily visit to McDonalds(tm) and equivalent. And if McDonalds(tm), then a salad or a cheeseburger with a coke, but very rare Maxi-menus, which would be barely available under the 5 EUR mark here. It must have their reasons why BigTasty(tm) is only very infrequently available at Estonian McDonalds(tm). In other countries however, with typical overweight diseases, McDonalds(tm) and equivalent are an more cost efficient alternative to healthy eating (menu from 3 $ in the USA for example). Not so in Estonia, where obesity is more a disease of the rich. It becomes even more clear, when one looks further to Asia. Here is the discrepancy between prices of burger and median salaries often much bigger and people nourishes themselves often of rice as a main source of food. In the Asian region, obese people are often seen as wealthy and are especially preferred by women as life partners for that reason, meanwhile in West Europe, the ideals of a perfect men are perfectly different. So prices/ wages ratios may have bigger effects in a society, then expected, and may be not just limited to the consumption rates of health food.

Knut's right. McDonalds is not at fault in Estonia. In the US, it's cheap food and a minimum-wage worker needs to work 20-30 minutes to afford a Big Mac meal. In Estonia, they have to work a few hours for the same meal. So I think part of this is just lifestyle changes (more time in front of the TV/computer, less time outside), and part of it is demographic. Older women tend to be fatter, and due to low birthrate and emigration, there are a lot more older women than younger women. So that brings the numbers up.

As Italian who is married with an Estonian woman, I however say that I like to be sitting around a table and to be near a woman who doesn't say continuously "this is fatty!", "no cakes, please!", etc. By the way, my wife is not fat, because she doesn't drinks alcohols and makes regularly some gym. Italian women, in the last years, became are crazy about diets and bio food. They sometimes do not eat for days. On the contrary they give a lot of bad food to the children (snacks, fried things, not fresh food) and, as a consequence, in Italy we have the problem of obesity among children (about 50%, increasing).