Average BMI in Uruguay
Men in Uruguay have an average BMI of 27.5, women 27.6. Both means fall in the WHO overweight band for men and overweight for women. That puts Uruguay 35th of 186 countries in our data, ranked from highest BMI to lowest.
Key numbers
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Estimated share in each WHO category
Columns may not sum to 100 because of rounding. Real BMI distributions have a longer right tail than a normal curve, so the obese share here is probably a few points low.
Uruguay among its neighbours
What a given BMI means in Uruguay
Read it as: a man with BMI 30 in Uruguay has a higher BMI than 68% of men. Values under 1% or over 99% are shown as <1 and >99.
In plain language
The standard deviation for men in Uruguay is 5.5. About two thirds of men have a BMI between 22.0 and 33.0; for women the middle two thirds run from 21.4 to 33.8. Compared with the global mean, men here are 3.0 points higher and women 2.8 points higher.
BMI does not distinguish muscle from fat, and the WHO bands were set on European populations. For South and East Asian populations the same BMI carries more health risk, which is why several countries there use 23 and 27.5 as their own cut-offs.
Questions
- What is the average BMI in Uruguay?
- 27.5 for men and 27.6 for women, with standard deviations of 5.5 and 6.2. Averaged across the sexes that is 27.6, against a global figure of 24.6.
- What share of adults in Uruguay are overweight or obese?
- Our estimate from the mean and SD: 68% of men have a BMI of 25 or more, and 32% are at 30 or more. For women it is 66% and 35%. These assume a normal curve, so the true obesity shares are likely a few points higher.
- Is a BMI of 25 high in Uruguay?
- A BMI of 25 is the WHO line between healthy weight and overweight. In Uruguay it is higher than about 32% of men and 34% of women. So for men here it is below the middle of the pack.
- How does Uruguay compare with Croatia?
- Men in Croatia average 28.2 against 27.5 in Uruguay; women 27.0 against 27.6. Croatia ranks 34th, Uruguay 35th.
NCD-RisC does not publish standard deviations. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD. Uruguay is one of them, so the SD, the category shares and the percentiles above use the global spread rather than one measured here.
Source: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, Lancet 2017, age-standardised mean BMI for 2016. Percentiles on this page are our estimate from a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD.
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Check your BMIAlso by country: Average height by country and Life expectancy by country.