Obesity is a global problem and needs to be viewed as an epidemic

#obesity #health #overweight #healthyfood #unhealthyfood Obesity is a global problem and needs to be viewed as an epidemic. Efforts to tackle it at the international level is extremely slow and no country has, yet, been able to reverse the trend as revealed in a recent major study and reported in news.sky.com dated 19 February 2015.
The six-part series has been published in The Lancet and it examines how different countries across the world are dealing with an increasing obesity epidemic. The focus is on a whole range of issues beginning from not only the quality of diet but also on how to influence and encourage children to eat healthier food.
The study has found that while consumption of healthy foods has improved, it has been overtaken by people going in for more unhealthy foods – a paradox. As a result, some of the wealthiest regions in the world are still stuck with the lowest quality diets.
As per estimates, 600 million people worldwide are obese, with 2.1 billion now overweight. This aspect of being overweight should be given necessary importance because is believed to be the reason for death of 2.8 million people every year.
Reports indicate that in some countries like the UK, childhood obesity numbers have levelled off, but even today, no country can claim to have reversed the obesity epidemic. Therefore, experts want a worldwide action plan that would include restrictions on how food meant for children is marketed. Moreover, they would also like to have suitable regulation of food nutritional quality and availability in schools, better labelling with nutritional values and taxes on drinks that are high in sugar.
The intentions are to increase awareness and penalize those who do not toe the line.

Dietary habits around the world – the best and the worst

#healthyfood #unhealthyfood #junkfood A study of the dietary habits of the world has revealed that people in Chad and Sierra Leone, in Africa, have the best diets because they consume plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts and whole grains while the Belgians love their chocolate and waffles, and the Hungarians their rich goulash, they are the worst. This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 19 February 2015.
The result of the study conducted by Dr Fumiaki Imamura, of the University of Cambridge, has been published in The Lancet Global health journal and the study has assessed the quality of diet in 197 countries, covering almost 4.5 billion adults, 90 per cent of the global population.
In general, the study has found that there is a rise in consumption of fruit and vegetables worldwide probably due to various awareness campaigns but, this rise was offset by an increase in the consumption of junk food.
The observation is that people who live in many of the wealthiest regions like the U.S. and Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand even now have some of the worst quality diets in the world. The reason is because they have some of the highest consumption of unhealthy food worldwide.
However, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia – like China and India - have seen no improvement in the quality of their diet over the past 20 years.
The study has identified 10 healthy food items as fruit, vegetables, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, whole grains, milk, total polyunsaturated fatty acids, fish, omega-3s, and dietary fiber. Simultaneously, they have also identified an unfavorable diet that is based on seven unhealthy items namely - unprocessed meats, processed meats, sugar-sweetened drinks, saturated fat, trans fat, dietary cholesterol, and salt.