Posted on 09/03/2006 5:56:04 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Obesity has reached pandemic proportions throughout the world and is now the greatest single contributor to chronic disease, an international conference was told here.
"This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world," Australia's Monash University professor Paul Zimmet, chair of the 10th International Congress on Obesity, said on the opening day of the conference.
The spread of the problem was "led by affluent western nations, whose physical activity and dietary habits are regrettably being adopted by developing nations," Zimmet told more than 2,000 delegates.
The world now has more fat people than hungry ones, according to World Health Organisation figures, with more than a billion overweight people compared to 800 million who are undernourished.
The congress on obesity is held every four years, with the last three staged in Toronto (1994), Paris (1998) and Sao Paulo (2002).
"The conference will treat obesity as the keystone of all health priorities because it is the single greatest contributor to chronic disease throughout the world," said University of Sydney professor Ian Caterson, the event co-chair.
"There are now more overweight people in the world than undernourished and we are seeing the double burden of the extremes of malnutrition -- undernutrition and overnutrition -- in many developing countries.
"We know this is not about gluttony -- it is the interaction of heredity and environment. We know that small changes can make a big difference in peoples weight and health."
Zimmet said the problem needed urgent solutions -- not just widespread changes to diet and exercise but the rethinking of national policies on urban and social planning, agriculture policy, education, transport and other areas.
He also warned in an opening address that the growth of obesity-related diabetes, or so-called "diabesity", was set to bankrupt health budgets all over the world.
Around 370 speakers and presenters at the six-day congress will discuss a range of issues, including scientific research on how the brain regulates energy and advances in the prevention and clinical management of obesity.
The conference is being attended by academics and health professionals from Australia, Japan, the United States, Britain, Canada, Sweden, Indonesia and New Zealand.
--and the growth of obesity is most noticable among the "poor"--
Export some obesity to the starving people in Africa, and problem solved.
Go to Walmart and see for yourself.
No need for individual responsibility. It's not your fault. We'll take care of it for you. Just give us money
ping
I'd say they have their next target locked on, and it's... yep...fat people.
I call nanny-ping.
Why can't we just outlaw FAT? Then no one would be able to get it.
And this is bad news, how?
Or Old Country Buffet -- sad to see.
Nanny State Ping..............
We told them so.......
Or both.
I've seen 8 year old girls with HUGE bellies. Abdominal fat, the deadly kind. And their mothers are too busy looking at new shoes for themselves. Too many happy meals and definitely not enough exercise.
While our country has a glut of food (and fast food, which is cheaper and more readily accessible than spending an hour each day making something decent); a lot of which people don't bother to make their own informed choices about and has helped contribute to obesity, our society is also prone to being deskbound and lethargic. Sit at a desk for 8 hours, go home, sit on the couch. (assuming people have only one job.) TV, portable music, other gadgets that isolate people from each other is a possible, though usually indirect, cause for obesity.
People need to be taught, in school, to make their own conscious choices. And we all know that isn't happening today. They're being told "What's right", and such preaching is insulting, if not disingenuous in the extreme. If people aren't happy and are slowly rotting, I suppose that's their choice. But on a financial, if not social, level, we're still in this together.
Where are all the DARWIN people.
This isnt obesity its evolution. We are evolving.
Why try to stop the evolution process.
Instead of growing wings we are growing fat bellies. who knows what we may end up being.
Actually it is. Go to any inner city and see the fat people everywhere. Only wealthy people can afford to high protein diets and have enough leisure time to exercise and stay healthy.
Look at the poor displaced by Katrina from Alabama, Mississippi and N.O. Most of them are severly overweight.
It's easy to poke fun at this issue if you choose to remain blind.
If people paid for their own health care, they'd be less inclined to lead unhealthy lifestyles. Fatasses aren't going to bankrupt me.
Other than 1 regular doctor check up every 2 years, I haven't had to see a doctor for an illness since I was in my single digit years.
Exercise regularly, eat a healthy diet of whole grains, lean meats and fresh vegatables and fruit and I don't drink hardly at all nor have I ever smoked.
Not to worry. This is just one of the basic survival mechanisms that God gave all of his creatures. It should only remind us that famine follows feast... and it always does.
It's easier for a lot of people to pretend this isn't happening. It's not PC to call fat people fat anymore.
Yes, then we will be seeing pictures of starving fat people in Africa instead of emaciated ones.
Oh, yeah. I host an Italian restaurant. The most common reason for using the handicapped parking spots is: they're too fat to walk very far.
When I was a kid I'd have had to pay a dime and walk inside a tent to see what comes in here every day.
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