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Available studies conducted in North America suggest an association between obesity and urban sprawl, car use and walkable urban environments. The potential for transferring North American results to a European context has yet to be established. The examination of three case studies conducted on different scales in Luxembourg, Germany and France, questions the validity of such transfer. For each case study, the prevalence of obesity, a built environment and the urban context were analyzed. We find that urban sprawl, car use and walkability do not play a decisive role in obesity rates in the European case studies. Differences in urban ways of life and city morphology between Europe and North America may explain a large part of this result.