A diary originally posted on the European Tribune by Fran and slightly extended (with maps) by Jerome
This week I saw the following BBC feature repeatedly and every time it catched my attention.
US people getting fatter, fast
Americans are getting fatter at a rate never seen before, a report shows.
In the past year, the adult obesity rate rose in 48 of America’s states, and nationally from 23.7% to 24.5%, Trust for America’s Health found.
In 10 states, over a quarter of adults are now obese, despite campaigns alerting people to the dangers of over-eating.
Mississippi, famous for its calorific mud pie, ranked the highest, followed by Alabama and West Virginia.
(white means “no information” in the maps below. The colors show the percentage of obese people, per State)
1987:
1992:
1997:
2003:
I have been traveling to the US for decades now and every time I was amazed at the kind of obesity I saw. People here where overweight too, but not in the soft flappy why I got to see in the US and it was hard to imagine that it could get worse, but this is what seems to happen.
Crisis point
The non-profit organization said the situation had reached crisis point and current policies were failing.
Currently, about 119 million, or 64.5%, of US adults are either overweight or obese.
According to projections, 73% of US adults could be overweight or obese by 2008, Trust for America’s Health warned.
I do agree with the conclusion about the poor nutrition. Maybe one could even go further considering it to be starving. Nutrition is not just about calories, especially not empty calories and as long as the body does not receive what it needs for a healthy and well-functioning metabolism it will signal hunger as it starves and is hungry to get what it needs.
“We have a crisis of poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the US and it’s time we dealt with it.”
The trust says more needs to be done to tackle inactivity and poor diet, focusing particularly on schools to prevent bad lifestyle habits being learned in childhood.
But this is not just about the US. As described in the BBC feature this phenomenon can also be observed in the UK
“We have seen this year-on-year rise in obesity in the US that has been mirrored in the UK. We know we are only about seven years behind them.
“When will we in this country wake up and smell the coffee?
“The Americans have woken up to it before and clearly they are still in a state of policy paralysis.
“In this country, the government is working very hard to try and develop a strategy for obesity but at the moment very little practically is being done.
“It really is time that we got our finger out and started making real changes.
“This is no cosmetic irritation, it is a serious medical problem.”
But again it is not just the UK it seems to affect all of Europe. I wrote about above, that this soft, flabby kind of obesity was for associated with the US. Well, that has changed – I think about 5 years ago I started to see some of this here in Switzerland too, and over the last two or three years it has visibly increased.
I do agree again with the BBC feature that one of the solutions, if not the only, is education. I wanted to link to an article from the Independent about a program in French schools, which must have been published something over a year ago, but could not find it anymore. Thus, I was happy to find the following feature in my local newspaper:
Learning about food and physical exercise with «Tacco & Flip»
THE BASEL-LAND NUTRITION PROJECT AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IS GOING INTO ITS SECOND ROUND
The lure of fast food is omnipresent. Fast food chains are everywhere. 30% of the kids are overweight. «Tacco & Flip» want to counter this trend.
In the USA, where fast food was invented, obesity is one of the major health problems these days. And since the fast food wave has washed across nearly every continent in the meantime, this is an increasing problem for us here, too. This makes it all the more important that the issues of lack of physical exercise and uncontrolled food intake (for which not only fast food can be held accountable) are tackled early – i.e. from birth.
Very often this works well as long as the parents are around, but not always. The following figures show this clearly: 60% of the kids have a weak or damaged posture; 40% have a weak cardio-circulatory system; 40% have muscular and stamina deficiencies; and 30% are overweight. These figures are alarming.
These are frustrating numbers and I do hope that education will help to improve the situation.
The project aims at a balanced energy exchange for kids, learning about healthy nutrition in a playful way, and adequate physical exercise – i.e. more of it again. Irène Renz, head of Health Promotion stated that obese kids are not singled out for therapy within this project. The project addresses all kids.
But while writing this, I was also wondering if this is not a more systemic problem of our society – the obesity only a symptom of its malfunction, that includes more than just food and if not tackled will have grave consequences for society as a whole.
What do you think?
