UK Obesity Increases by 48% in 3 years

This is not just a UK problem, it is a Western problem - Europe, the U.S. and every country influenced by the American lifestyle. If you see a McDonald's nearby, you know there is trouble.

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NHS [UK National Health Service] trusts see spending on obesity rise seven-fold in three years

London Guardian

April 9, 2009
Obesity data collated by NHS shows high demand in many trusts for stomach surgery and gastric bypasses

Many NHS trusts have seen spending on obesity increase more than seven-fold in just three years, data released today suggests.

High demand for stomach surgery for obese patients as well as the cost of specialist equipment – such as larger examination couches – means the costs to primary care trusts (PCTs) have shot up.

The new statistics come after official figures published in February revealed that weight-loss stomach surgery for obesity has risen 40% in a year.

The data, from the NHS information centre, showed there were 2,724 hospital admissions in 2007-08 for bariatric surgery, which includes stomach stapling and gastric bypasses.

Overall, hospital admissions for obesity also increased, reaching 5,018 in 2007-08, a 30% rise on 2006-07 and almost a seven-fold increase on 1996-97.

Today's data, obtained from 60 PCTs by GP newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, showed 48% were now treating more patients for obesity than three years ago. link to complete article

More on Obesity as a Death Sentence

This story is from the UK, but all you have to do is look around in the U.S. and you know it is our problem too.

Since most of us are overweight, we often tell ourselves that it is impossible to lose weight (and keep it off).  Yes that is true if you eat the "normal" American way.

To survive this epidemic you need to change your mind set.  Here are a few suggestions:

1.  NO MORE FAST FOOD -- French Fries are a big culprit, not just Big Macs

2.  Soft Drinks help you tip the scales, and everybody drinks them!! Try water, its better for you

3.  Transfats --  many cookies, chips, and processed foods have them.

4.  High Fructose Corn Syrup --- brings on the pounds (and diabetes too).  LOOK AT LABELS.

5.  Supposedly 100% Juices -- there are some still that have high fructose corn syrup

6.  Stop eating meat - not just beef but chicken too.  Of course it is hard, but what would you rather do?  Live a few more years or keep eating hamburgers?

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Eating ourselves to death: Britain's fat epidemic

Obesity was cited as cause of death in 1,200 cases in 2007, an increase of more than a third in just five years. Experts say the true number is much higher

By Nina Lakhani
London Independent
Sunday, 8 March 2009

The number of people whose deaths are directly related to obesity has leapt by 35 per cent since 2003, according to new figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday.

Obesity was cited on death certificates as a contributing factor in 1,203 deaths in England and Wales in 2007, highlighting how the incidence of related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and blood clots continues to rise alarmingly. The outlook is believed to be as serious in Scotland.

Experts warn that these figures are the tip of the iceberg, as the majority of obesity-related deaths are not being recorded on death certificates.


Opposition politicians last night seized on the figures as the first statistical sign of obesity's increasing causal role in death. They accused the Government of "dithering" and failing to tackle the country's weight epidemic effectively.

Meanwhile, senior doctors called for guidance to help junior colleagues record obesity more consistently and provide better evidence for assessing the effectiveness of efforts to curb the problem.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davies, president of the UK's Faculty of Public Health, said: "These figures add to the growing evidence that obesity is increasing at an alarming rate and is associated with a whole range of fatal conditions. While the numbers may partly reflect a growing awareness among doctors about obesity and its effects, I'm in no doubt that they also represent a real increase in obesity-related deaths. Obesity is not something to joke about; it is a huge public health problem, a burden on the NHS, and it shortens people's lives."

Anne Milton, the shadow health minister who obtained the figures from the Office of National Statistics, said: "Labour has neglected the UK's obesity time bomb, and these figures demonstrate the awful consequences of their complacency. We urgently need action now, but unfortunately this Government's record has been one of obesity targets missed and scrapped, budgets for information campaigns being raided, and dithering over food labelling. It is about time the Government woke up and started to take obesity seriously."

A major report last year suggested that most adults in the UK are overweight, and obesity has roughly doubled since the 1980s. If the trend continues, obese and overweight people are predicted to cost taxpayers in England £50bn a year by 2050 in increased use of the NHS and other services.

Obesity increases the risk of many life-threatening diseases. A recent study found a 74 per cent rise in new cases of diabetes between 1997 and 2003; 80 per cent of people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes are overweight, according to Diabetes UK. Heart disease is the biggest killer. According to the National Heart Forum around 6 per cent of deaths from coronary heart disease are due to obesity. Yet only 6 per cent of people understood the gravity of being overweight, most seeing fat as a vanity issue, said the Government's Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson.

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem health spokesman, said: "This is the first indication that the worst possible consequence of the obesity epidemic is with us now. We already knew that obesity has led to an increase in very serious conditions, but these figures now show us that obesity is having an impact on death rates right now. The big worry is that if the epidemic is not brought under control, we could see life expectancy drop for the first time in decades. I don't believe these figures can be written off by claims of better recording. I fear this is a sign of things to come."

There have been longstanding concerns about the accuracy of death certificates, something the Government has promised to address in the Coroners and Justice Bill. A study in 2005 found that pathologists failed to mention obesity in two-thirds of cases, even when the individual was grossly obese with a BMI of over 40.

The pathologist: 'Doctors are being asked to lie'

Dr Emyr Benbow, histopathologist at Manchester Royal Infirmary and post-mortem expert at the Royal College of Pathologists, is concerned about a growing problem

"The number of severely obese people we see on the autopsy table has shot up in the past 10 years. Although we weigh and measure all those patients who have post-mortem examinations, so that BMIs can be calculated, we don't calculate trends. But we know there is change because we have to handle the bodies, something which has become a real hazard for our technical staff. A lot of hospitals have had to install wider fridges.

"Over the same period we have seen more cases of people in their thirties, forties and fifties with very high BMIs who have unexpectedly died in the community from conditions such as pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis, in which obesity is very likely to play a part. These are significant changes and are reflected in the fact that my colleagues are increasingly willing to record obesity on the reports they make to the coroner.

"Many pathologists still do not record obesity on death certificates because they are worried about offending relatives. I know of a number of instances where doctors, including pathologists, and coroners have been asked to remove obesity from the death certificate because the family find the term stigmatising. But while the numbers may be an underestimate, the upward trend in these new figures is hugely important as we now know more people are dying of obesity and its effects...for complete article

Eating our way to the morgue

link to image

see link at the end of this post

George Will is not my favorite journalist.  He says some stupid things sometimes.  Recently he mentioned illegitimate births among African Americans --- these days, many scholars know full well you don't mention something like that without giving a background....   I guess George W. doesn't know that white women are more likely to have abortions....hence a high rate of births among African American single mothers....

anyway

he got it right this time.  I wish he would use his clout with the dairy industry.... get them to diversify into soy products  ---  

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Where the Obesity Grows
by George Will
Washington Post

excerpt:

...During World War II, when meat, dairy products and sugar were scarce, heart disease plummeted. It rebounded when rationing ended. "When you adjust for age," Pollan writes, "rates of chronic diseases like cancer and type 2 diabetes are considerably higher today than they were in 1900." Type 2 diabetes -- a strange epidemic: one without a virus, bacteria or other microbe -- was called adult-onset diabetes until children began getting it. Now it is a $100 billion-a-year consequence of, among other things, obesity related to a corn-based diet, which is partly because steaks and chops have pushed plants off the plate.

Four of the top 10 causes of American deaths -- coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer -- have, Pollan says, "well-established links" to diet, particularly through "the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat." What he calls America's "national eating disorder" is not just that Americans reportedly eat one in five meals in cars (gas stations make more from food and cigarettes than from gasoline) and that one in three children eat fast food every day. He also means the industrialization of agriculture, wherein we developed a food chain that derives too much of its calories -- energy -- not from the sun through photosynthesis but from fossil fuels...

link to complete Washington Post article

link to image

see "Obesity - a Weighty Issue for Children," Environmental Health Perspectives, October 2003.

Obesity at 18 increases risk of early death by 1/3

link to image

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Obese teenagers carry same risk as smoking 10 cigarettes a day

Chance of early death from preventable diseases high for overweight adolescents

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
London Independent

Overweight teenagers run the same risk of an early death as people who smoke regularly – and the risk increases substantially with very fat adolescents.

Teenagers who are clinically obese have the same risk of premature death as someone who smokes more than 10 cigarettes a day. An investigation of 45,000 men whose health was monitored for 38 years has found that being overweight at the age of 18 is equivalent to being a regular smoker in terms of the overall risk of dying relatively early in life from preventable diseases.

Men who both smoked and were overweight as teenagers were likely to die even earlier than those who fell into just one or other of the risk groups. But the study did not find any evidence to suggest that smoking and obesity combined to produce even greater risks when found together.

Martin Neovius of the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, who carried out the study published in the British Medical Journal, said: "It shows the importance of measures to reduce obesity in adolescents. A lot of people are dying from preventable deaths. more

Obama to the U.S. population - lose weight

After overeating yesterday, it may be good for all of us to read the following report:
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Los Angeles Times

Obama and obesity: Change you can believe in? 1:00 PM, November 27, 2008

In addition to mortgage rescues, banking bailouts and healthcare reform, some people would like to know what President-elect Barack Obama intends to do about the nation's growing girth. Not to worry. A think tank called the Public Health Advocacy Institute, housed at Northeastern University's School of Law, sent a list of nearly 50 legal and policy recommendations designed to combat obesity to Obama's Health and Human Services transition team this week. "Public health, unlike some other national assets, cannot be 'rescued' or 'bailed out,' " PHAI President Richard Daynard wrote in a cover letter attached to the document. "A sophisticated and aggressive federal approach to obesity is desperately needed." Among the recommendations:

* Issue an executive order demanding that all executive branch agencies consider the impact of major federal legislation on the obesity epidemic, similar to the Environmental Justice Executive Order of 1994. * Impose federal taxes, both sales and excise, on purchases of unhealthy foods and beverages and earmark the revenue for obesity programs. * Prohibit and remove all commercial promotion of food in schools and educational settings receiving federal funds.

* Provide funding through the 2009 reauthorization of the federal Child Nutrition Bill to establish a garden in every school. * Establish strict federal regulations limiting food and beverage advertising to children, including the Internet. To see a copy of the document, go to the PHAI website. PHAI is a nonprofit law and policy research organization. -- Shari Roan

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link to cartoon image

How people eat in the UK -

We are what we eat

London Independent

November 23, 2008

...Last week the European Union announced that, from September 2009, it would introduce free fruit and vegetables in primary schools to boost nutrition among children and combat obesity among 22 million European children.

It would cost €€90m (£76m), paid through the Common Agricultural Policy. Free fruit and vegetable schemes already exist in schools in England, Scotland and Wales, targeted at youngsters aged four to six, although this is not enjoyed by all schools.

There is also little evidence that the children who need it most, those on low incomes, are eating the fruit and vegetables provided by schools. Ministers are now desperate to limit the scale of obesity in the UK.

Latest predictions suggest more than half the population will be obese by 2050. The prevalence has doubled in the last 25 years, with 24 per cent of people aged 16 or over and 16 per cent of children classed as obese.

Obesity is most common among the lowest social classes, particularly in women, and in Scotland and the North-east of England, according to the document...more

Our own obesity will create a "Horror Show" - no kidding

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/oliver-warns-of-obesity-horror-show-993498.html

Oliver warns of obesity 'horror show'

By Tim Moynihan, Andrew Woodcock and Dan Bentley, PA
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Jamie Oliver at the Fifteen Melbourne restaurant launch in Melbourne, Australia

Britain will face an obesity "horror show" unless action is taken to tackle it over the next 10 years, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver warned today.

He said: "The obesity problem is an epidemic, it's a massive problem. If we don't deal with it in the next 10 years, it's going to be 10 times harder to fix, and it will be a horror show."

He was speaking at a news conference after addressing a parliamentary inquiry into health inequalities at which he warned Britain was facing a "new kind of poverty" where many parents were unable to nourish their families - not through lack of money but lack of knowledge.

He demanded to know why there was not a "minister for food", someone from the private sector who was all over the problem "like a rash" and could drive the response for the next 10 years.

"We are not in a great place, but we are in a place from which it can be fixed," he told the committee.

"If we leave it, it will be like America, where it is almost not worth it, because it's so ingrained."

At the news conference he said he would turn down any invitation to be "minister for food", because he could do more "on the outside", but he would be happy to find someone fit for the job.

His wide-ranging evidence to the committee included an attack on the EU over labelling of food, criticism of the detail of plans for teaching children how to cook in schools, and a suggestion that women used to hold knowledge about nutrition which was now missing since they went to work.

He also said he agreed with legislation in California to cap the number of fast food outlets in an area.

link to article

An epidemic of McDonalds

painting by
Fernando Botero 

A few days ago I went to a water park with my family.  Being a middle aged woman, I was very self conscious about hanging around in a bathing suit.  

It might not be the nicest thing to say, but after seeing all the 200+ lb. women around in bathing suits, I felt much better. 

While the following article laments how fat we all are, the real problem is not our lack of control while we eat.  It is that there is SO LITTLE that we can eat that isn't bad for us.  We of the McDonald's, frozen pizza generation are learning too late.  Before you know it, you are 42 years old and you wear a size 24W bathing suit.  You never ate much desert, but lots of bread with so much high fructose corn syrup.... so you didn't have a chance.

I go to the grocery store and in every single aisle there are things we shouldn't eat. EVERYTHING has high fructose corn syrup or transfats -- even the bread (at the store I shop at there is only one brand that doesn't have this poisonous stuff). Most every major road I drive in Houston has a dialysis center, especially in the Latino neighborhoods.

Our growing size is not because there is something wrong with us.  There is something wrong with our capitalist system that is all about selling -- doesn't matter if it is good or bad food, it needs to be sold -  even if people die from eating too much of it.

p.s. having done a demographic survey at the water park of women from different ethnic and racial groups, I can say that Latinas do not have the market cornered on obesity.   Just a note, recently immigrated women from Mexico are very rarely overweight.  But take a look at their cousins who have been here 10 years...and have gotten used to the American diet.

see article on the banning of fast food restaurants in south Los Angeles:  LA Times "Council Bans Fast Food Restaurants in South L.A."

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August 10, 2008

New York Times
GUEST COLUMNIST
Honey, I Plumped the Kids

By OLIVIA JUDSON
LONDON

...pregnant females with access to junk food ate, on a daily basis, roughly 40 percent more food (by weight) and 56 percent more calories than rats that just had chow. Moreover — and this is the interesting bit — pups whose mothers ate junk food while pregnant and lactating had a greater taste for food high in fat and sugar than those whose mothers did not. The junk-food pups ate more calories and were more prone to gaining weight.

What goes for rats does not necessarily go for humans. Nonetheless, such results are thought-provoking. As everyone knows, humans are getting fatter and fatter. According to the World Health Organization, 400 million adults around the world weighed in as obese in 2005. In the United States, more than a third of women between 20 and 39 are obese, some of them extremely so. For the first time in history, large numbers of obese women are having children.

Being obese during pregnancy is dangerous for the mother and expensive for the health care system. But does it affect the babies?

There are reasons to think it might. The period between conception and birth is crucial — after all, you’re growing from a single cell into a baby. Your heart is being built; your brain is being wired. Exposure to alcohol during this time can disrupt brain development; lack of iodine may permanently stunt growth. Being starved in the womb can lead to health problems such as heart disease later in life, especially if food becomes abundant. So what about overnourishment? Does an “obese” environment in the womb somehow predispose babies to obesity later on?

...the results of several studies suggest that the very fact of a woman being obese during pregnancy may predispose her children to obesity. For example, one study found that children born to women who have lost weight after radical anti-obesity surgery are less likely to be obese than siblings born before their mother lost weight. Another study looked at women who gained weight between pregnancies; the results showed that babies born after their mothers put on weight tended to be heavier at birth than siblings born beforehand. Since the mother’s genes haven’t changed, the “fat” environment seems likely to be responsible for the effect.

Why might this happen? Perhaps an “obese” environment in the womb alters the wiring of the developing brain so as to interfere with normal appetite control, fat deposition, taste in food, or metabolism. Studies on other animals suggest that parts of the brain that control appetite develop differently under “obese” conditions. And in humans, one study has found that babies born to obese mothers have lower resting metabolic rates than babies whose mothers are of normal weight.

For most of our evolutionary past, the problem has been avoiding starvation. An environment awash with sugars and fats is, therefore, an evolutionary novelty: in hundreds of millions of years of evolution, this is the first time such foods have been abundant. Giant quantities of fats and sugars have not, historically, been available to a developing fetus, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they do have a harmful impact.

If this is right, it raises the alarming possibility that the obesity epidemic has a built-in snowball effect. If children born to obese mothers are, owing to the environment in the womb, predisposed to obesity, they may find staying thin especially hard. Reversing the epidemic may thus rest on helping women to lose weight before they conceive and helping them to eat a balanced, non-junk-food diet while they are pregnant. The well-being of the next generation may depend on it.

Olivia Judson, a contributing columnist for The Times, writes The Wild Side at nytimes.com/opinion.

for link to NYT essay click here

Diabetes is eating us alive: Part III

This article is a few years old, but even more relevant today. Did you know that Fenway Park was rebuilt because the seats are too small for today's heavier set baseball fans?

"Over the last decade, diabetes rates rose 60% in the U.S. (Over half of diabetes cases are due to overweight, poor diet and physical inactivity."

from commondreams.org

WASHINGTON - July 31 - Many experts agree that obesity is one of the most pressing health problems facing the country. Over the last twenty years, obesity rates have doubled in adults and children and tripled in teens. Two-thirds of Americans are now overweight or obese. Yet some food industry groups question whether obesity rates are increasing and instead, claim that the rising rates are due to a change in the definition for obesity (Body Mass Index). For anyone else who is skeptical, here are some other signs that obesity rates are going up.

1• Because of safety concerns, the Federal Aviation Administration has instructed airlines to add ten pounds to approved passenger weights.

2• When administering vaccines and drawing blood, doctors now need longer needles to penetrate thicker layers of fat on Americans’ bodies

3• Almost 25% of women in their 50's are too large to have their body fat measured with a traditional skinfold caliper, an instrument developed in the 1950’s

.4• Liposuction is the most commonly performed cosmetic surgical procedure in the U.S., increasing 118% between 1997 and 2001.

5• Over the last decade, diabetes rates rose 60% in the U.S.5 (Over half of diabetes cases are due to overweight, poor diet and physical inactivity.

6• Today’s size 10 was sold as a women’s size 14 in the 1940's

.7• The Gap, Limited Too and Target are selling plus-sized clothes for youth

.8• Plus-size boutique Lane Bryant is expected to increase its number of stores from 650 to 1,000 over five years. Catherine's Plus Sizes is projected to increase from 470 to 700 stores. The plus-size clothing market generates $23 billion in sales a year, accounting for a quarter of women’s clothing sales

9• Nike changed the size scale for its women’s fitness apparel. A small sports bra use to fit a woman with a 33-inch to 35-inch bust. Now it fits a 35- to 37-inch bust.

10• One of the reasons that the Boston Red Sox decided to rebuild the legendary Fenway Park was that the seats were too narrow for today’s baseball fans. The seats in the new ballpark are four inches wider

11• More benches and bigger seats have been installed in Seattle’s Puget Sound ferries to accommodate wider riders.

12• Despite the rising obesity rates and the tremendous impact they are having on Americans’ health and health-care costs, federal and state governments still are doing little to address the problem. To reduce obesity, federal, state and local governments need to mount campaigns to promote healthy eating and physical activity, require calorie labeling in fast food and other chain restaurants, decrease the availability of junk food in schools, make walking and biking safer and more convenient by building bike lanes, sidewalks and trails, increase physical education in schools, restrict junk-food advertising and marketing aimed at children, and put into place other policies and programs that help to make it easier for Americans to eat better and be more physically active.

For more information on what local, state and federal governments can do to promote healthy eating and physical activity, visit www.cspinet.org/nutritionpolicy.

Sources

1 Phillips D. “Airlines Told to Adjust for Heavier Passengers: FAA Raises Weight Estimates for Safety.” Washington Post, May 13, 2003, p. A4.

2. Nagourney E. “Bigger Needles for Better Vaccinations.” New York Times, November 28, 2000, p. F9.

3. Grady D. “The State of Weight: Many Are Too Fat for the Calipers.” New York Times, January 9, 2001, p. D7.

4. American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Accessed at on July 1, 2002.

5. Mokdad AH, et al. “Prevalence of Obesity, Diabetes, and Obesity-Related Health Risk Factors, 2001.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2003, vol. 289, pp. 76-79.

6. McGinnis JM, Foege WH. “Actual Causes of Death in the United States.” Journal of the American Medical Association, 1993, vol. 270, pp. 2207-2212. Hu F, et al. “Diet, Lifestyle, and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Women.” The New England Journal of Medicine, 2001, vol. 345, pp. 790-797.

7. Nifong C. “The Incredible Shrinking Woman.” The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), January 5, 1999, p. E1.

8. Boccella K. “Plus Sizes for Kids Make Way into Stores.” Providence Journal, March 24, 2002.

9.Van Allen P. “Chains to Grow with Plus-Sizes.” Philadelphia Business Journal, September 27, 2002.

10. Givhan R. “As Its Market Expands, Nike Elects to Super-Size.” Washington Post,May 3, 2002, p. C2.

11. Patton P. “America's Ever-Bigger Bottoms Bedeviling Seating Planners.” Miami Herald, September 23, 1999.

12. Sanchez R. “A Fitting Problem for Prosperous Century’s End.” Washington Post, April 15, 1999, p. A1.