A new survey has revealed that Canadian across all ages and regions have now become significantly more fat and less fit over the past few decades, with people from all ages packing on pounds and at the same time losing strength, flexibility and endurance.

What is more worrying is that the trend is most significant in children and youngsters, which has managed to raise the rates of chronic diseases, which generally tend to start at earlier ages. Experts have now stressed at unless substantial changes are made, future generation of the country's residents might end up facing additional challenges in trying to live alone and independently because of their lack of fitness.

"The children and youth of Canada are becoming taller but heavier, fatter, rounder, weaker and less flexible than they were a generation ago. If our younger cohorts are starting off much worse off than in the past, you know it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are going to be serious challenges and problems in our future", said survey leader Mark Tremblay.

As per the findings of the survey, currently about two-thirds of Canada's adults are either overweight or obese, and about of the quarter of the children are too.

Carried out as the Canadian Health Measures Survey, this study has been the first large-scale effort to measure the fitness of Canada since 1981.