Dietary Enigmas

Foresight Report On Obesity

October 17, 2007

Tags: acarbose, adrenal gland, adrenal insufficiency, alcohol health, child obesity, children, Digestion, epidemic, family life, Fat, fat loss, heartburn, men, obese, proton pump inhibitors, stress raisers, stress relief, weight loss, wellness, women
Posted in: Low GI, Trehalose, breast cancer, cancer, diabetes, diet, food, health, heart, obesity, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes

The Foresight report, while stating the obvious, is a welcome study of the trends that are affecting our wester diet and lifestyle - but and there is always a but. Who will read the report and more importantly can government and the food industry actually change behaviour - I think it is unlikely. My feeling is that an enormous proportion of the west’s population is now committed to a self indulgent, ostrich like existence that believes either there is no point in making any changes or that any changes are futile. The slope we are sitting on is slippery and comfortable but we are inexorably sliding towards an obesity epidemic, a diabetes epidemic and a chronic illness epidemic that will ultimately demand rationing of health care resources. I read in a book recently by Marcus Buckingham (the Galup Organisation) that the choices we make today inevitably detrmine our future - if only we could see it. The slight Edge by Jeff Olson talks about the small choices we make every day being what influences our future - we don’t get sick today by making one bad choice - they accumulate over years. We do have a choice - but we have to act from a place of education not ignorance and comfort.

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The UK has a growing population and an ageing population (National Statistics 2005a). Trends indicate that individuals get fatter as they age; as the UK population gets older, there will be an underlying trend towards more overweight. At the same time, IOTF forecasts 24% of boys and 32% of girls will be overweight by 2025, which may reinforce growing obesity rates in the population.

Globally, WHO estimates that over 1 billion people are currently overweight, including 800 million women, and that over 300 million people are obese. More than 2.5 million deaths annually are weight related and this could rise to 5 million by 2020 (IOTF 2003b). Mortality rates resulting from obesity remain relatively low in developed countries, which may be the result of steadily increasing healthcare spending. The US, for example, is forecast to spend 19% of GDP on healthcare by 2014, up from 15% in 2003 (Heffler et al 2005). Of this, analysts expect 20% be devoted to treating obesity diseases (DKW Research 2004). Yet even with this spending, “the steady rise in life expectancy during the past two centuries may soon come to an end” (New England Journal of Medicine, in Sunday Times 2005).

Developing countries face a double burden of disease – obesity and malnutrition. Since obesity initially tends to be associated with higher socio-economic groups, this may divert limited health resources and lay foundations for perpetuation of health inequalities. By 2015, over 1.5 billion people may be overweight (WHO 2005a). Marie Ruel of the International Food Policy Research Institute states that many in the developing world are, “moving from hunger to obesity in a single generation” (Futurist 2005a). Developing governments do not look likely to have the same resources to devote to long-term care of chronic illness, for example current spending on weight-loss surgery in the US is more than the entire health budget of Vietnam, population 83 million (Rayner 2005).

In the UK, abundant food and lower real prices in the past generation may have encouraged some to higher consumption, but nationwide, there is evidence that calorie intake has remained fairly constant. As food prices have fallen, spending per calorie has inevitably risen, perhaps reflecting greater quality of foods, or reflecting a charge for greater convenience. This section explores some economic drivers of obesity. The rising costs of obesity to the public purse may necessitate government intervention. Profit is the principal driver in the food supply chain, but the growing consumer awareness appears to be raising the importance of nutrition.