Will the obesity epidemic of 2030 be defeated?
Can we really speak of progress and modernity in our current Europe? Libération, Huffington Post, Le PointandLe Monde(1) have been dealing in recent days with a colourful topical issue: a wave of obesity is planned in Europe. After the United States, this scourge will affect the fifty-three most industrialized European countries.
What the WHO (World Health Organization) denounces is a seriouspublic health problemon a global scale that Europeans have refused, for more than ten years, to see but which will explode in our faces.
Data
A person is overweight when their BMI (Body Mass Index, you also do this BMI test) exceeds 25 and obese when the BMI is above 30. Thus, it is indeed a huge obesity crisis that will invade all of Europe in the years to come.
Like America, whose inhabitants are known to have rich, fatty, sweet food and a growing sedentary lifestyle, we follow this way of life far too closely. The WHO is warning us, urgently: we will incur the same problem.
In fact, it is the Danes who should do best, especially women who will even lose weight: 13% of them are overweight in 2010 and they will be only 9% in 2030. In the Netherlands, from 2010 to 2030, the increase is expected to be slight.
More than a quarter of Swedish men and a fifth of Swedish women will be obese in 2030.
In Great Britain, the rate is between 30% and 35% of the population victim of extra kilos.
In Greece, obese inhabitants will double in fifteen years from 20% to 40%.
In Spain, the obese increased from 19% to 36% over the same period.
Virtually the entire adult Irish population will be overweight in less than 20 years: this is almost 90% Irish men in 2030 compared to 74% in 2010. As for women, they are far from slender: from 2010 to 2030 the percentage increases from 57% to 85%. The figures are therefore impressive and the WHO is on high alert.
The measures put in place
Overweight and obesity-related pathologies occur when lifestyle factors are the cause of disease and disability worldwide. Most of the total population now lives in countries where obesity kills more people than hunger.
In 2010, there were just under 3.5 million people who were overweight. According to a study published in the journalThe Lancet Oncology, excess pounds cause more than half a million cases of proven cancer in adults. A previous study specifies that overweight reduces life expectancyand another stipulates that the decline in productivity and the costs of protection related to health amount, more or less, to 3% of world GDP or 1,800 billion euros.
A member of the WHO’s European office, Joao Breda, thinks that it is necessary to take fair and useful measures which would make it possible to fight against the announced projections.
Thus, for him, it is the countries of the Euro zone which would see the rates calculated by the experts regress significantly. The WHO has set itself the objective of stemming the rise of this manifest scourge of public health before the year 2015 by constantly reinforcing recommendations such as “one should not eat too salty or too sweet”, “fruits and vegetables are good for your health”, “eat a balanced diet”, etc. At the same time, for subjects who are alreadyin a state of proven obesity , it is necessary to practice appropriate physical activity supervised by professionals.
Stephen Paul is the lead author and founder of My Health Sponsor. Holder of a diploma in health and well-being coaching with more than 200 articles in the field of health, he makes it a point of honor to offer advice based on reliable information, based on scientific research, and verified by health professionals.