By Linda S. Heard

Fat is no longer a feminist issue. Instead, battling obesity has become a priority of governments faced with the gloomy scenario of increasingly corpulent populations. Given the health complications associated with being grossly overweight, they are right to be concerned but where does legitimate health education stop and the nanny state begin?

 There was a time not so long ago when chubby toddlers were considered cute and overweight adults as either displaying affluence or simply jolly. Those were the days when the word ‘obese’ was rarely used and ‘anorexia’ and ‘bulimia’ mistaken for Greek deities.

Nowadays, however, bombarded with images of lithesome models and celebrities, young people are becoming increasingly obsessed with the scales. They have a fight on their hands, though, because modern day sedentary lifestyles coupled with unhealthy eating habits are not conducive to weight loss.  It’s a fight that more and more are losing.

Today a quarter of all British adults and 24 per cent of children between the ages of two and 15 are clinically obese, which means their Body Mass Index (BMI) has exceeded 30. An analyses done on behalf of the World Health Report 2002, suggested 58 per cent of diabetes, 21 per cent of heart disease and 8-42 per cent of certain cancers were attributable to a BMI above 21.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says overweight and obesity can lead to Type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke respiratory difficulties, musculoskeletal problems, skin problems, osteoarthritis, gallbladder disease, hormonally-related cancers and fertility problems.

Researchers from the University of Madrid’s School of Medicine have dubbed Britain Europe’s ‘Fat Capital’. The British government projects that most Britons will be classified obese by 2050 when costs to the country could reach £45bn annually in terms of health care and lost working hours.

The Health Secretary Alan Johnson is worried. The threat to public health posed by obesity is a “potential crisis on the scale of climate change” he recently warned.

British doctors say children as young as six-months old are patients in their obesity clinics and have told the BBC that some parents “are super-sizing meal portions for very young children” because they have “lost sight of what ‘normal’ weight looks like.

Some doctors believe overfeeding a young child is a form of child abuse or neglect and welcome such children being removed from their parents and taken into care. Others, however, claim obesity is a public health problem, not a child protection issue.

Some of the measures already being taken to stem the tide are as follows:

Nurseries and primary schools are placing children as young as two-years-old onto miniature treadmills, while the National Health Service will pay for obese teenagers to have stomach stapling operations and dance classes.

School children will now be regularly weighed and when the scales aren’t favorable the results will be reported to parents. There is even a radical program in place whereby extremely overweight children can be forcibly removed from their homes to be trimmed down.

The advertising of high-fat and junk food – burgers, chicken nuggets, potato chips, sugar-coated puffed wheat and Colas – is to be banned from television until after 9pm when most British children are in bed. And there is also a plan to ban harmful trans-fats (saturated fats) in foodstuffs.

School lunches have already been divested of stodgy items and cooks have been retrained to provide healthy nutritious menus incorporating vegetables, salads and fruit. But thus far this expensive strategy has failed because this type of healthy eating is alien to many children addicted to food packed with fats, starches and sugars. Instead, they prefer a lunch box from home or a fast food takeout.

There have even been tales of parents stuffing hamburgers, chocolate bars and packets of potato chips through school gates to supplement lunches, which some kids say leave them still hungry. This surely goes to show that there is only so much the state can do.

More than 40 per cent of Britain’s doctors believe obesity is generally self-inflicted and, thus, the obese should be refused National Health hip and knee replacements unless their condition was proven not to result from an unhealthy lifestyle.

Likewise, the British Fertility Society has recommended that obese women be refused fertility treatment unless they are prepared to first lose weight.

The overweight are also being discriminated against in the workplace. A survey of 2000 personnel officers by the magazine Personnel Today showed that most employers prefer to offer jobs to workers of “normal weight”.

Britain may be Europe’s ‘Fat Capital’ but obesity has become a global pandemic. The World Health Organization believes there are currently 1.6 overweight adults worldwide and 400 million who are clinically obese; statistics which have doubled since 1995. Around eight years ago the tide turned and there are now more people who are overweight than underweight.

A team of US researchers backed by the National Institute on Aging contend life expectancy for the average American could decline by as much as five years over the next decade due to burgeoning obesity. America ranks as the ninth fattest country in the world with an estimated 64 per cent of Americans considered overweight or obese, way above Britain positioned at 28.

A study presented at a seminar in Qatar by Issam Abd Rabbu suggests 50 – 70 per cent of married women and 30 – 50 per cent of married men living in GCC states are either overweight or obese.

Another, last year, showed that 17 per cent of children in the UAE between six and 16 are overweight and according to Hoffman La Roche over 60 per cent of UAE nationals are overweight.

The UAE Ministry of Health is soon to conduct a story to assess the main factors contributing to childhood obesity. In fact, the UAE ranks number 18 in the world index of ‘fattest nations’ topped regionally by Egypt at number 14 and Kuwait at number 8.

Topping the list of the world’s fattest countries is Nauru, an island in the South Pacific where 94.5 per cent of its population of 13,000 is overweight. Other South Pacific islands have the dubious distinction of grabbing the 2nd – 7th slots. Researchers say this is partly due to a genetic predisposition.

Australia’s obesity crisis has forced the country to remodel their ambulances to support heavier patients. According to studies 67 per cent of Australian men and over half of all Australian women aged over 25 are either overweight or obese. Experts predict that in little over 20 years 50 per cent of all Australian children will be tipping the scales. Why is this happening?

Here’s what the WHO has to say:

“As incomes rise and populations become more urban, diets high in complex carbohydrates give way to more varied diets with a higher proportion of fats, saturated fats and sugars. At the same time, large shifts towards physically demanding work have been observed worldwide. Moves towards less physical activity are also found in the increasing use of automated transport, technology in the home and more passive leisure pursuits”.

It’s no wonder anguished government ministers are pulling out their hair. The issue is so complex that no amount of legislation can be a magic bullet. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink in the same way you can bring spinach to a child but you can’t make him or her eat.

UCLA researchers reported in the April 2007 issue of American Psychologist that dieting doesn’t work. They found that the majority of dieters regained the lost weight and more. One of the researchers Janet Tomiyama said “Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain.

“One study found that both men and women who participated in formal weight-loss programs gained significantly more weight over a two-year period than those who had not participated in a weight-loss program.”

It’s the same with exercise. Gyms have proven to be no panacea because people rarely stick to a long term exercise program due to demands upon their time or a lack of willpower.

In the end most experts agree that in order for us to reach a healthy weight we need to make a lifestyle change. No more fast food takeaways. No more lounging around for hours watching television. No more being attached at the hip to our laptops. No more shuffling towards the car for a brief ride to the shops.

Governments have a duty to encourage, educate and inform but in the final analysis our health and that of our children is in our own hands. As adults, we decide what lines the shelves of our cupboards and refrigerators and we choose to be couch potatoes instead of realizing our potential as active, dynamic individuals.

When people eventually realize the true dangers of obesity instead of shrugging it off, there may be come a tipping point. In the same way smoking is declining so may our addiction to fatty foods and our aversion to exercise be eroded in time.

Only when we truly accept the fact that we are masters of our own destiny can we hope to make a difference.




 

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