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New global study on obesity
Poppy99
Posts: 271 Forum Member
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Report in The Times, according to GMB, that British girls are the fattest in Western Europe.
And a quarter of adults in UK are obese - that surprised me, thought it would be more.
Apart from the obvious, i.e eating too much, what is the underlying reason why we are getting larger? Binge drinking, a general acceptance that it is ok to be big, no self control/respect. You only have to walk up a High Street and see very overweight people. It is really sad to see young girls who have what appear to be a beer gut. When you go abroad, generally the indigenous population does not have this problem.
We have a growing awareness of eating disorders, and all sort of reasons are attributed to those problems, including media pressure to be slim. But whilst eating disorders are more common than they used to be, with a growing number of men suffering, it is the high levels of obesity that is the real problem.
It does not bode well for the NHS in the future. We all know that obesity can bring on all sorts of medical ailments, diabetes type 2 for instance, and added together with an ageing population, the NHS is going to struggle. And then there is the growing acceptance of expensive gastric band operations.
How can this be addressed? You can't make people have self control, they will buy the wrong stuff regardless of if you somehow tax it.
And a quarter of adults in UK are obese - that surprised me, thought it would be more.
Apart from the obvious, i.e eating too much, what is the underlying reason why we are getting larger? Binge drinking, a general acceptance that it is ok to be big, no self control/respect. You only have to walk up a High Street and see very overweight people. It is really sad to see young girls who have what appear to be a beer gut. When you go abroad, generally the indigenous population does not have this problem.
We have a growing awareness of eating disorders, and all sort of reasons are attributed to those problems, including media pressure to be slim. But whilst eating disorders are more common than they used to be, with a growing number of men suffering, it is the high levels of obesity that is the real problem.
It does not bode well for the NHS in the future. We all know that obesity can bring on all sorts of medical ailments, diabetes type 2 for instance, and added together with an ageing population, the NHS is going to struggle. And then there is the growing acceptance of expensive gastric band operations.
How can this be addressed? You can't make people have self control, they will buy the wrong stuff regardless of if you somehow tax it.
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Also the rise of non-food consumption additives, preservatives etc do not help.
It's a plague. You see it when you go into Asda. Apart from fruit and veg, the shelves are jam packed with utter crap.
The health advice from the government is shocking too. You don't need to diet to lose weight. It only takes a surprisingly small change or two and you can lose loads of weight in a year.
What can be done? Well, the food industry is hardly going to regulate itself when there are profits to be considered. I think that's why the gov't has to intervene if they want changes to happen. I'm not sure that people are really unaware of why they're fat though, I think they just don't care enough to do anything about it. That must be frustrating for many people to consider, but the over-riding impulse for most of us is the idea that we are free to choose how we live our lives; no one likes being told what to do.
If I could make one change, I would get rid of all food advertising. I know that will never happen as so much relies on ad revenue and sponsorship, but I think it would get people started on thinking more about what they're buying.
I don't think it's fair to say that obese people don't have any self-respect. We live in a broken society and obesity is one of the symptoms. Many would like us to think that obese person = greed, but there's so much more to it; genetics, upbringing, trauma, etc. I would also agree with what Fanny-Anne said about the availability of so much fattening food, we evolved in much different circumstances. Maybe there should be some research into why certain people are able to resist so much temptation, are they genetically different in some way? What can we learn without it falling into the old assumptions that thin/fit people are somehow superior/smarter/better than those who aren't thin?
The food industry is regulated, and if you really want to know how much fat and sugar is in processed food, the trick is to read the label.
I always think more could be done in schools, in terms of teaching real cookery - none of this 'design a pizza topping' nonsense - and finding a PE system that even the fat, timid children love instead of loathe with a passion. Force someone to shiver miserably on the sidelines praying that the ball comes nowhere near them, and they may never exercise again. Teach them to love using their body - for cheerleading, aerobics to music, silly races in fancy dress, ANYTHING that gets the pulse up - and they will want to carry on. It doesn't help that so often PE is in the hands of hearty, insensitive types who see no reason why people shouldn't be force, with accompanying ridicule and humilation, until they want to vomit.
I can see why governments are fighting shy of selective taxes after the absurd trouble they had with the hot snacks tax. But surely a ramped up traffic light system could be introduced, with BIG, CLEAR warnings on very high fat and high sugar foods.
Completely agree. In general people with a weight problem know the foods that make them put on weight and are choosing to eat them anyway. The only case I can see better labelling making a difference is on food marketed to children because they don't do the shopping but in the case of adults, they eat what they want to eat and the fact its making them fatter is normally less important than the taste.
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Overweight_and_obesity_-_women,_by_age.png&filetimestamp=20111123162830
British girls age 18 to 24 years (the blue column) are head and shoulders the fattest in Europe; about 3 times the rate of most of our neighbours.
A national health policy disgrace for the government to acquiesce and let this continue by cosying up to the supposedly 'self-regulating' food multinationals who so profitably pump this stuff in industrial quantities into our national stomach.
The 'nanny state,' as the right wing like to malignly label it, is the principle reason why life expectancy for ordinary people has doubled over the last couple of centuries.;-)
And why government interference in the lives of private citizens has more than doubled.
You are free to choose but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.
Wow! I must be really old-fashioned as I have this strange habit of choosing my food and then choosing to eat it! Do these multinationals have "food-pumping stations", or do they offer a door-to-door service?
That doesn't seem to be the case because the French are shown in the report as the slimmest of all.
I see that Greek people are just about as obese/overweight as the UK. Despite their years of austerity, they don't seem to have cut down on buying food!
I'm shocked when I go round supermarkets in this country and see so many obese people (obviously food shops is where you find them!) all leaning on their trolleys because they can hardly walk.
Can hardly be true if young women born into one society (eg Germany) are only a third as likely to become overweight or obese as people born into a comparable neighbouring society (such as the UK). It's clearly something about the way those societies organise themselves and the priorities they have, that leads to the wildly varying levels of overweightedness.
Well said!
That's the problem with this country, it's always someone else's fault. People need to start taking responsibility for themselves and stop blaming their obesity on others.
I rarely see that
Life expectancy has gone up because of medical advances. We're actually less healthy, the only difference is that due to drugs and in some cases surgery, we can now prolong unhealthy lives that would previously have lead to a premature death.
Nope, banning never achieves what it set out to achieve.
Not neccesarily. A lot of people used to be malnourished, simply because they didn't have enough to eat. Malnourishment leads to it's own set of health problems.
Thin doesn't always = healthy.
Ultimately people need to take responsibility for their own health and weight. Education is the key, so schools should make home economics, nutrition a main priority.
The last time I checked what you put in your mouth and eat is entirely up to the individual concerned and scales and a mirror will tell you if you are getting fat because of it. You would need to be a complete moron not to know that.