Unbalanced diet: more harmful than smoking
On May 18, a conference was held on the recommendations for a World Convention for the promotion and protection of healthy eating under the aegis of the UN. On this occasion, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Mr. De Schutter Olivier, declared that an unbalanced diet presents more health risks, at the global level, than smoking.
Obesity a multifactorial global scourge for more than 30 years
We have known for a long time, and mainly thanks to the recommendations of the World Health Organization, that the scourge of obesity is caused by a lack of sporting activity associated with poor nutrition: a lack of vegetables and fibre, a surplus of industrial foodstuffs, insufficient intake of nutrients and vitamins and excess sugar and fat… Obesity becomes the source of so-called social diseases such as diabetes, cancer, lung and heart diseases…
The United Nations has been able to identify actions to fight against obesity. In order to combat unhealthy diets, she advocates a tax on products that serve obesity, stricter regulations on saturated fat, foods high in salt and sugar as well as a restriction of advertisements for foods harmful to maintenance. of the state of health. In addition, the UN wants agricultural subsidies to be revised in order to reduce the price of certain nutrient-rich and healthy ingredients. She wants to support the production of local products for consumers.
For this, Olivier De Schutter denounces certain facts. This man is Belgian, jurist and professor of international law at the University of Belgium. He is, since 2008, special rapporteur for the right to food at the UN. He wants to put in place measures aimed at promoting healthy eating. However, he is aware that this can only work if the underlying systems are adapted. For governments, while focusing on increasing available calories, pay little attention to the different types of kilocalories ingested, the target audience, the way foodstuffs are marketed and their prices.
Government measures for healthy eating
The UN rapporteur on the right to food wants to set up a global convention on the establishment of an adequate diet. Concerns are growing because the international community remains deaf to the spread of the epidemic of obese people, poor eating habits and poor communication on adapted physical activity, specifies the rapporteur in a press release. For him, the publication of his report on nutrition and the right to food dates back 2 years and it has been 10 years since the WHO implemented its global strategy for healthy diets, physical exercise moderate and an optimized state of health. “Priority actions regularly undertaken by the WHO and all the warnings defined and then carried out have not really been heard ,” he says.
Indeed, even if awareness campaigns on overweight are carried out among the world population, no less than 1/5th of the European population is obese . In Europe, around 2008, half of women and men were overweight, and around 20% of the European population was obese. The latter continues to gain ground. The same is true for pathologies such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and many other health complications that accompany them.
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.