The Laziest Countries in the World
With the word’s best athletes competing in Vancouver, The Daily Beast crunched the numbers to determine the most slothful nations on the planet. Welcome to the Couch Potato Olympics.
While a few hundred athletes skated, skied and pranced over the ice and slush of Vancouver each Olympic day, a few hundred million people sat on their duffs, with beer and whatever the local version of Cheetos is to take it all in on television or online.
Which gave us an idea. Rather than give all the glory to the countries with the fittest and fastest, why not an Olympic style competition to determine the laziest country in the world?
For the Couch Potato Olympics, we stuck with 24 countries in the developed world, as determined by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-member countries that had extensive data available. The large majority of this list is Western—a byproduct of only ranking countries with accurate, reliable, and consistent data. (There was no Russian judge in this competition.)
We evaluated four criteria, each weighed evenly:
• Calories Per Day: from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations from the 2009 Statistical Yearbook; 2003-2005 data.
• Television Viewing: combined data from the OECD Society at a Glance 2009 and OECD Communications Outlook 2009, tracking hours of television watched per day and the percent of people who prefer to watch television with their free time.
• Aversion to Playing Sports: from the OECD Society at a Glance 2009, tracking the percent of people who prefer to play sports with their free time.
• Internet Usage: average hours per capita for December 2009, provided by ComScore.
Most countries had good data for all four of these criteria—we didn’t rank any country that didn’t provide scores in at least three (for those countries, the remaining three categories were evenly weighted). For ties, the country that consumed more calories won (or lost, if you’re looking at their waistline). Read on for the winners of the Couch Potato Olympics. For once, the real winners are the losers. And it starts with a country that may or may not surprise you.
The Daily Beast has released its list of the world's laziest countries, which attempted to assess sloth as a science. They used criteria such as calorie intake, television viewing, aversion to sports and internet usage. High marks in all of these indicated a aversion to laziness. Where did Canada rank? Well, my fellow hosers, the answer might distress you.
#12. Spain
Calories per day: 16
Television viewing: 6
Sports aversion: 18
Internet usage: 11
Word from the Couch: It makes sense that a country with a relatively low daily caloric ranking relies on a nutritious fruit for its messiest national event. August in Spain means it's time for a giant salsa-making fest La Tomatina in which goggle-wearing participants pelt each other with large, red tomatoes. The annual summer tradition, which dates back to the mid-20th century, celebrates a staple ingredient in Spanish food and entices Spaniards to take advantage of tomato season. Despite all the tomato hurling and siestas, Spain still places only in the middle of the road on our list.
#11. Denmark
Calories per day: 13
Television viewing: 4
Sports aversion: N/A
Internet usage: 19
Word from the Couch: The Danes are known most for churning out clogs and excellent furniture designers. Yet Denmark places a surprising 4th for television watching. Turns out the Danes take their TV pretty seriously. There may be only a few dozen channels, but every year 650 television professionals converge for the annual Danish TV Festival to come up with new ideas, and to learn from producers working in countries around the world.
#10. Portugal
Calories per day: 7
Television viewing: 10
Sports aversion: N/A
Internet usage: 18
Word from the Couch: Portugal is a sleepy country -- maybe it's not the laziest in the Couch Potato Olympics, but The International Journal of Epidemiology once found the Portuguese the most idle of all Europeans, with almost 88 percent of people reporting little exercise and lots of time spent sitting. "Our numbers tell us the same thing," government spokesperson Tiago Craveiro told the BBC. "The government is starting a program this summer to raise public awareness about the problem." No word yet whether making the public aware yielded any substantial increase in activity among the Portuguese.
#9. Germany
Calories per day: 9
Television viewing: 12
Sports aversion: 10
Internet usage: 14
Word from the Couch: Germany annually holds the grandaddy of all get-sloppy-drunkathons: Oktoberfest. Apparently years of chewing on Bratwurst and downing litres of Hefeweizen, combined with a 21st-century workplace, are getting to Germans. "People are more idle than 40 years ago -- they are desk-bound and lazy," Marianne Eisinger-Watzl of the Federal Research Institute for Food and Nutrition told Reuters. "Food is more energy-dense and snacking is on the up." And that's why Germans rank in the top 10 for daily calories consumed.
#8. France
Calories per day: 6
Television viewing: 11
Sports aversion: 13
Internet usage: 7
Word from the Couch: France is a historically prim-and-proper country, but it is also home to La Pourcailhade, literally the Festival of the Pig. Hog-loving participants of this longstanding French tradition enjoy piglet races, pork sausage-eating contests, and a challenge to see which Frenchman can best imitate a pig. Because this swine-obsessed nation is still the fashion capital of the world, there is even a competition for best-dressed pig. Miss Piggy would be proud.
#7. Mexico
Calories per day: 17
Television viewing: 2
Sports aversion: 4
Internet usage: 12
Word from the Couch: TV broadcasts started in Mexico in 1950 under a public television model similar to that in Britain, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Since then Mexican television has opened up to market influences, and is dominated by the publicly traded Televisa, which operates Univision for Spanish speakers in the United States. With myriad viewing options, from telenovelas to soccer games, it's no surprise Mexicans love their television almost as much as their neighbors to the north.
#6. Poland
Calories per day: 14
Television viewing: 3
Sports aversion: 7
Internet usage: N/A
Word from the Couch: In Poland, call them Couch Pierogies. The stars of the annual Pierogi Festival are the little potato-stuffed dumplings, which are the most famous player in Polish cuisine. The festival is no joke: Hundreds of thousands of pierogies are eaten every year at the event, many served with a dollop of sour cream on the side. After eating, Couch Pierogies plop in front of the tube and live up to their name.
#5. Great Britain
Calories per day: 11
Television viewing: 13
Sports aversion: 2
Internet usage: 5
Word from the Couch: Britain is nearly as averse as Turkey in terms of playing sports, but there's one sport, or sport-like activity, that the OECD probably didn't include in its statistics: the annual Cheese Roll in Gloucestershire. Contestants race down a steep hill after a wheel of cheese, some suffering semi-serious injury. This event might not be worthy of mention in a ranking of the biggest Couch Potatoes in the world, except that the winner of each race gets to keep (and eat) the cheese. Double whammy: A OnePoll survey found English men to be among the worst lovers in the world because they're "too lazy."
#4. Turkey
Calories per day: 15
Television viewing: 8
Sports aversion: 1
Internet usage: 4
Word from the Couch: Football (using the non-American definition) is a big deal in Turkey. Maybe not as big as it is in other European countries, but professional Turkish football teams routinely draw tens of thousands of fans to their games. What do Turks do away from the pitch? We know what they don't do: oddly, they tend to eschew playing sports with their free time. Instead, the Turkish spend more leisure time than any other country in this ranking visiting or entertaining friends. Visiting friends is fun, but it won't score bonus points with the Couch Potato judges.
#3. Belgium
Calories per day: 2
Television viewing: 9
Sports aversion: 5
Internet usage: 13
Word from the Couch: Cultural influences from France and Germany collide to produce a high average daily caloric intake in Belgium. Belgians wash down their waffles, mussels, and mayo-slathered pomme frittes with a cold Duvel or one of the hundreds of other ales produced in the country. Numerous festivals celebrate Belgian beer, including the Belgian Beer Weekend, and food is usually served in sizable portions. Belgians give Americans a run for their money when it comes to big eating, and they're nearly as averse to playing sports in their free time, but at least Belgians get out from behind the computer once in a while.
#2. Canada
Calories per day: 8
Television viewing: 5
Sports aversion: 12
Internet usage: 1
Word from the Couch: Must be the snow. And the cold. Canada may not have the world's best Internet infrastructure, and there's plenty of hockey and skiing, but even the most die-hard winter sports enthusiast has to go inside sometime -- and look up the score of the Leafs game. And when it snows so much that Olympic skiing events are canceled, there's nothing better for Canadians than snuggling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a warm computer. Canadians on average spent nearly 43 hours online in December, according to ComScore.
And yep... you guessed it, ...the laziest country in the world is the USA!!!
USA #1Calories per day: 1st out of 24
Television viewing: 1st out of 24
Sports aversion: 3rd out of 24
Internet usage: 3rd out of 24
Word from the Couch: U-S-A! U-S-A! U.S. sports four medals in The Daily Beast's Couch Potato Olympics, easily nabbing the top spot on our podium. Just like in the real Olympics, where America is jockeying to hold on to the medal lead, America always goes big, or doesn't go at all. From the Wing Bowl in Philadelphia, to New York City's historic Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest to countless county fairs across the U.S. featuring fried everything, gluttony is as American as an entire apple pie, and apparently all that downtime in front of televisions and computers translates into lots of sports viewing, not much sports playing.
