Scotland, home of the deep-fried Mars bar and caffeine-fired Buckfast Tonic Wine, has a huge number of people “living dangerously,” according to a national study released last week.

The survey of 6,574 Scots found that two-thirds were overweight, two-thirds were physically inactive and more than half had a poor diet.

Over all, 55 percent of people in the country had three or more of five risk factors for an early death: obesity, inactivity, smoking, having more than two drinks a day and eating fewer than five daily servings of fruit or vegetables.

Scots did worse than Americans in similar surveys, the authors said, as well as worse than Canadians, Dutch, New Zealanders, Swiss and Finns. However, “we weren’t necessarily worse than England,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. David I. Conway, a public health expert at the University of Glasgow Dental School.

The study — an analysis of data in the 2003 Scottish Health Survey — was published in the journal BMC Public Health. [Findings from the same survey, on secondhand smoke and mental health, are reported in Vital Signs on this page.]

People who were poor, had little education, were unemployed or had unskilled jobs were more likely to have more risk factors, it found.

Other researchers have noted what is called the “Scottish effect,” Dr. Conway said — Scots in poor neighborhoods tend to die younger than people in similar neighborhoods in England and Wales. It’s not clear what, “but there’s something else in the Scottish psyche,” he said.