Malta has the highest percentage of obese and overweight women among EU candidate countries, Health Promotion Department principal scientific officer Maria Ellul said.
Maltese men are not exempt from the lumpy league and follow hotly behind the Czech Republic, with the second highest percentage of obesity in EU candidate countries.
Maltese women led the list of obesity and overweight in EU accession countries with 68 per cent, with more than half being clincially obese with a body mass index (BMI) of over 30.
Meanwhile, men placed second with 69 per cent, just one per cent behind the Czech Republic. It is interesting to note that just over 45 per cent of Maltese men were overweight.
"Malta does not have specific statistics on obesity but these figures were based on estimates and other studies. However, we can no longer wait for more scientific research, the problem is here and now and we have to act," Ms Ellul said.
Meanwhile, the estimated prevalence of overweight and obese women in EU countries is led by Greece, while Germany tops the list for obese men.
Obesity means having a BMI of over 30, while being overweight means having a BMI of between 25 to 29.9. A person's BMI is measured by taking the ratio of their weight in kilogrammes to the square of their height in metres.
These worrying results were released during a recently held EU conference on tackling obesity.
A hard-hitting position paper prepared by the International Obesity TaskForce, in collaboration with the European Association for the Study of Obesity Task Forces, was presented at the conference.
Ms Ellul, who attended the conference in Copenhagen, said the paper clearly illustrated that governments could no longer ignore the problem because healthcare costs could spiral out of control unless something was done.
The costs of obesity were estimated to eat up as much as eight per cent of overall health budgets and represented an enormous burden both in terms of individual illness, disability and early mortality, as well as in terms of costs to employers, taxpayers and society.
It was also stressed that the challenge of tackling this problem did not just lie with health ministries, but was also the duty of a full range of government departments as well as the private sector.
"The challenge is to create a multi-faceted public health approach capable of delivering long-term reductions in the prevalence of obesity. A great challenge but achievable," Ms Ellul said.
"It is the intention of our department to rope in partners who will be crucial in helping us solve this problem and be part of a national strategy to deal with the prevention of obesity," she said.
The report said that obesity formed a pan-European epidemic that presented a major barrier to the prevention of chronic non-communicable diseases.
"At least 135 million EU citizens are affected and perhaps another 70 million in those countries seeking to join," it said.
More than half the adult population in Europe is overweight with up to 30 per cent categorised as clinically obese.
The report predicts that the epidemic of obesity will continue rising and could very well double over the next two decades.
Extremely worrying is the rising prevalence of childhood obesity.
Type 2 diabetes, an illness normally regarded as a weight-related disease of old age, was now being reported in children in several European countries, including the UK, Sweden and Poland.
"Childhood obesity is an acute health crisis and the rapidly emerging feature of Type 2 diabetes among obese children should be sounding alarm bells for the immediate, as well as the long-term health of youngsters," the report said.
Excess body weight is now the commonest childhood disorder in Europe, affecting some one in six.
Children are extremely vulnerable to sophisticated marketing techniques and intense repetitive advertising for high-calorie food and drink were contributing to the rise of obesity.
Obesity is primarily diet-induced, the result of a sustained excess intake of energy-dense foods with high fat and refined carbohydrates, as well as an insufficient consumption of fruit and vegetables.
The report delved into how a growing proportion of adults in both EU and accession countries needed more effective therapeutic management to control their obesity and reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
It has also been estimated that 78,000 new cancer cases in the EU each year have been attributed to being overweight.
Ms Ellul said the report highlighted the crucial point that being overweight or obese were as much a community responsibility as a personal responsibility.
When there were no safe, accessible places for children to play or for adults to walk, jog or ride a bike, that was a community responsibility.
It was also the responsibility of the community when school lunch rooms or office cafeterias did not provide healthy and appealing food choices.
"Food matters from the cradle to the grave and this should start with exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of the baby's life," Ms Ellul said.
"The health system needs to address the issue of nutrition from the lack of breastfeeding practices to bad weaning," she pointed out.
Ms Ellul said that prevention should be the foremost priority of any government to ensure that people with weight problems were getting help before it was too late.
"We have reached the point where we need a national strategy with clear objectives to ensure that we are all moving in the same direction."
The report recommended that the European Commission should address childhood obesity in its forthcoming action plan on nutrition at the Council of Health Ministers in November.
"The EU should take the lead in devising society-wide approaches to preventing and managing the epidemic," the report said.
"Both the European Commission and national task forces should be established to develop and ensure the implementation of the bold strategies now needed to counteract the epidemic of obesity - which presents Europe with the biggest single public health challenge of the 21st century".