Posts: 467
Threads: 23
Joined: Mar 2009
Reputation:
0
Britons are the fattest people in Europe, shocking new research shows.
A quarter of women and a fifth of men in the UK are now so overweight that their health is at serious risk.
British women head the EU league, with 23 per cent clinically obese, and men fare little better, with 22.3 per cent classified as obese – behind only Malta.
What's going on?
Posts: 639
Threads: 68
Joined: Mar 2009
Reputation:
0
This is happening because of the junk and over processed food people eat. You can find out more here <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/">http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/</a><!-- m -->. Authorities are helpless, and do nothing. Fruit and vegetables are too expensive for the common people.
Posts: 361
Threads: 10
Joined: Aug 2008
Reputation:
0
I think that junk food and processed food are available in most countries, but Britain has a more liberal attitude towards them.
I know a lot of women who feed processed food to their children every day, because the food is marketed for children and they believe it is healthy to do so. I even know families where the mother eats healthily and then feeds processed meat and potato shapes to their kids!
A lot of adult processed food is marketed as healthy - at one point I fell into the trap of eating low fat processed food to lose weight, without realising how much sugar was in it :fi
The cost of living is so high in the UK that most people - including parents - have to work. Women do not have the time or energy to cook a nutritious meal, so they just shove some frozen food in the oven. They also have to shop at supermarkets which open in the evening or on Sunday, and supermarkets often charge too much money for fruit and vegetables while processed food is cheap and often discounted.
Advertising companies make people believe that their friends and children won't like their attempts at cooking - it would be more socially acceptable to "cheat" and serve a bought product.
Processed food in the UK is often more unhealthy than processed food in many other countries - for example, we have different Kellogs Cornflakes to those produced in the rest of Europe :oO There are stories of the sugar companies sponsoring research into food additives, which concludes that the levels of sugar in our food is acceptable :x
Traditional British food is high calorie, because people used to do manual work and live in cold damp houses. Now people insist on well-heated houses and driving cars everywhere ;-) So when people do cook it tends to contain far more fat and starch than a modern person needs.
And, of course, there is our culture of binge drinking and binge eating. Most heart attacks in Scotland occur on a Monday morning, after a heavy weekend :roll:
If you see a doctor about your weight, they will be spectacularly unhelpful - they will tell you to "eat a little of everything" or "cut down on portion sizes" or "do a little gentle exercise" without spending time to understand why you are fat. They can be quite mean, and I know at least three people who were prescribed antidepressants with disastrous results (they were not depressed, just fat). I understand that doctors are busy and preoccupied with patients who are already ill, but they are creating health problems for the future...
Most terrifying, there are numerous diet foods and remedies, expensive gyms and slimming clubs that make a LOT of money out of fat people. The diet industry is big business... So these companies do not want to promote a lasting healthy lifestyle - they want you to put weight on again for next year :nonnon
Finally, there is a lot of confusion as to what constitutes healthy.
- In the post war period, people were encouraged to feed their children as much as possible. You will often see parents proudly talking about how their child is "a good big girl/boy" or "has a healthy appetite," or how they make sure their child eats meat at every meal.
- Parents and teachers are terrified of saying anything about a child's weight in case they become annorexic.
- Throughout the BSE crisis the public were repeatedly told that eating beef is healthy, and we must support beef farmers.
- When I was at school in the 90s, our GCSE biology text book and worksheets were produced in conjunction with the Ministry of Farming and Fisheries: consequently we were taught that eating large portions of meat and dairy is perfectly healthy, and that people get fat by eating too many sweets and putting butter on their vegetables (!!!)
- Sport and Cookery used to be what you did if you were stupid at school. I remember my school teachers telling me to concentrate on my studies instead of wasting my time with sport!
- Diets are seen as stupid and not nutritious. If you go out for a meal and tell your friends/family that you are trying to lose weight, they will immediately try to convince you to eat the fattiest meal and sweetest pudding on the menu as a "treat." Thin people are often portrayed as mean and malnourished, while fat people are friendly, jolly and happy.
- People grow up believing that their weight is due to their genetics, or that they are "naturally big" - their weight becomes part of their identity.
- The Body Mass Index has been shown to be innaccurate: many top sportsmen (including rugby players and boxers) are obese according to their BMI! Even when I was eating well and training every day, I was still overweight. So a person can be technically overweight but still healthy. But Doctors and the Government still use BMI - I suppose it is a convenient measure.
I have noticed a change now. There are childrens' TV programmes where the heros are thin and sporty, while the bad guys are fat (it used to be the other way round!) and there are a lot of cookery shows that try to convince the public that cooking can be quick, cheap and easy. In recent months there have been some public service information adverts, encouraging families to exercise more and feed their children smaller portions. I think schools are now obligated to teach a healthy lifestyle too.
Posts: 1,501
Threads: 114
Joined: May 2008
Reputation:
0
I suppose British people are not informed at all about the dangerous and unhealthy food. Women who don't cook at home because of a shortage of time, why they don't care about their health and the health of their children...
I thought your government care about people, but it even do not inform them about this. That's very sad!
