The laziest countries in the world have been revealed… and here’s where Britain came in the rankings

THE laziest countries in the world have been revealed – and it turns out we Brits aren’t too bad.

In fact we beat Australia, the US and many of our European neighbours in the study – coming in as the 12^th most active nation.

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Stanford University researchers collected smartphone data from more than 700,000 people across the globe to measure the amount of steps they took in a day.

They found the laziest nation – with an average of 3,513 steps a day – was Indonesia, followed by Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The UK stepped up the ranks with a score of 5,444 strides – that’s the equivalent of 5km a day.

Australia ranked 19th, with people walking 4,941 a day and US came in at 17th with an average of 4,774 steps are walked each day.

Hong Kong was the most active country, with the population walking an average of almost 7,000 steps a day, which equates to about 6km.

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China was a close second with an average of 6,189 steps walked a day, followed by Ukraine, Japan, Russia, Spain and Sweden.

The average amount of daily steps around the world is almost 5,000, equivalent to about 4km, making the UK above average.

The study, published in also found that countries with a bigger gap between the fittest and laziest had a higher rate of obesity.

Researcher Tim Althoff  said: “If you think about some people in a country as ‘activity rich’ and others as ‘activity poor’, the size of the gap between them is a strong indicator of obesity levels in that society.

“For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor ... it also had one of the lowest rates of obesity.”

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Despite the US and Mexico having a similar average number of steps, the US had a higher gap between the country’s fittest and laziest.

An activity gap between men and women was found in the lazier countries, with women taking less steps than men.

But in fitter countries like Japan, men and women walked about the same amount of steps a day.

Jure Leskovec, a member of the research team at Stanford University, said: “When activity inequality is greatest, women’s activity is reduced much more dramatically than men’s activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly."

This week it emerged that the obesity crisis in the UK was driving dementia cases to an all time high.

In May, it was revealed the UK was the FATTEST country in Europe, with one in three expected to be obese by 2030.