The Report...By Saul Santos

Food and Health – Obesity in the U.K.

It is known that obesity and overweight problems shadow our society these days. The lifestyle imposed by the modern times is one of the main causes for this problem, along with the extreme consuming ‘needs’ of modern people. It is true that our way of living does not let us set proper and healthy meals, leading us to choose fast food most of the times, due to its speed of cooking and eating, and the rather cheap prices which they are sold. This would be fine we did exercise to keep an equilibrium, but again our lifestyle does not allow us time to do jogging or even a couple of sit ups.
Several studies were made in the U.K. related to this subject, and all of them show the scary reality of this problem. More, they show that this behavior starts at young ages, giving worrying hints about our future.
In 1994, 17% of women and 14 % of men were considered obese. These percentages have been growing since then, reaching 23% on both genders in 2003. Related to this is the fact that most adults do not met the physical activity recommendations, as a 2003 study demonstrates. In the 16-24 years segment, only 54% men met those recommendations, and a even worse 30% of women do the recommended exercise. And it keeps dropping over the years to just 8 % of men and 3 % of women in the 75 and over segment. But the 16-24 segment gives us a hint about another problem that will affect our future society. This obesity problem starts at a very young age. In fact, surveys show that in 1995 13% of the children between 2 and 10 years were overweight, plus 10% that were obese. Those percentages were slightly raised until 2003, with 13% overweight plus 14% that were obese. The situation is does not brighten up when we turn to secondary schools, where students choose 62% of the times food with high fat or high sugar rates, for example chips, cakes, soft drinks, etc. On the other hand, healthy food, such as milk, salads, fruits or vegetables are only chosen 6% of the times.
Of course, over the years, the awareness for this problem has raised, especially since 2000. That is when the boom for treatments for the problem took place. In 1998, only 50 000 prescriptions for treatment drugs were made, it doubled on the next year, but from 2000 to 2002, prescriptions were increased from 150 000 to 750 000, and stabilized around that number for the following 2 years.
Still, predictions for the future are not bright. In 2005, 1.6 billions of people were overweight, and 0.4 billions were obese. In 2015, it is estimated to grow to 2.3 billions of overweight people, and 0.7 billions of obese people.
As we can see, the situation is very serious, and needs immediate actions. Information must be given to the public about what should they do to avoid this problem, or treat it as quick as possible and educational programs must be made for young people. Obesity is responsible for various health problems that are likely to lead to a premature death, along with severe emotional and physical problems.