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.
Not true. Back in the day, obese people were rare and regarded as freaks. Now obesity is so common that we've become acclimated to it (Americans who visit Europe for any length of time are often stunned when they return and see their portly countrymen with fresh eyes). Contrary to what you say, there's actually less of a stigma now. Like too many other unattractive features of our culture, obesity has been mainstreamed.
January? That's snowbird woosie time.............I spent my summers there. And as a teenager I cut grass for pocket money....I realize now I was getting paid below poverty level wages - but $9 bucks did go a lot further then than it does now.
Which reminds me - all I have in my pocket at the moment is $9....must rectify that in the morning.
oh we've made the trek there in august too.
i just about melted! fall/winter is a much
nicer time to visit :)
We had a small city garden most years but Mom canned and froze a lot of stuff.
You can save so much by not buying overly processed food.
Dad used to buy potatoes and flour in 50lb sacks. Bought fresh produce by the buschel.
It's an art but it can be done.
Baking a cake from scratch is much cheaper than a bought cake and so is just about everything else.
I was a mess when I first got married. Didn't know how to cook for 2. I always made too much..
Discovered the joy of cooking for the freezer...
I sure hope that this apparent movement doesn't put at risk our constitutional right to keep and bear... tailgate barbeques!!
We went for Christmas or Easter Vacation.
I'll never forget one Easter vacation, I went to school with my friends..............they never asked me again to come to school with them. The teachers, in an effort to make me feel welcome tried to include me in the classes and I was able to answer the questions my friends didn't know.
They were so embarrassed. As well they should have been. This was 11th grade and half the stuff the teacher was talking about, I had learned in 7th grade.
Another look at that picture raises another question.... What's that white rectangular thing across the kids chest? It's not something he's holding, and a napkin to catch food isn't that sharp cornered, and what's holding it up?
Neither my mother, nor my grandmother, ever did any canning - I am self taught on that. My grandmother occassionally made jelly or jam, but her real forte was baking - something I've only gotten into in the past 8-10 years.
I learned my love of cooking from my grandmother and my hatred for processed foods from my mother. When I was a kid and my dad was still NYPD, when he worked nightshift we had Hamburger Helpr or Tuna Helper for dinner....my mother couldn't be bothered cooking. When my father, and later I, took over ALL meal cooking such stuff as Hamburger/tuna Helper never came back in the house.
I just went back and looked at the picture again.......I just have always accepted it because I have seen kids that fat.......'
However, if you look closely the kid in front(on the right) is definitely wearing something to make his arms look "fatter" than they truly are.
There is no doubt the kid is hefty and should really not be eating McDonald's on a regular basis..........however this particular photo shows just how far the nanny-statists are willing to go with their lies.
Both my parents cooked.
Cooperation on Sunday meals was a sight to behold.
The table on Sundays was abundant. They cooked most of the vegetables for the week that day .
I snapped enough green beans to reach around the world a couple of times if stretched end to end.
My Mom could make biscuits to die for and never used a measuring cup. She knew how much flour her hand held..
Oh to have a mom like that.......even my grandmother couldn't/didn't do that, except when it came to pie crust.
I was asked this week for my recipe for meat sauce (for pssta, especially lasagne) and I really had a hard time giving it, because I have no set amount for ingredients.
I use a 20 quart stockpot to make tomato sauce.......and from that I will make a meat sauce, base for my chili, and thebasis for my lasagna.........but it is a 2 day process.
Once I decided I loved to cook, there was no such thing as dinner for 1..........or 2...........
If I'm in the mood to start cooking, I can feed 25 people. And still have leftovers.
Clarence Bass is a living example of his own advice. His eating philosophy mirrors the volumetrics approach, but is more more tightly controlled for his own purposes. Russian kettlebells are a fine way to get in great shape. Less expensive than a gym membership and fairly conservative of space around the house. Lisa Schaffer's book is an excellent introduction/instruction manual favored by many professional trainers.
A one gets older, the body does not consume as many calories. Whether this is the result of lower metabolism levels or the fact that cells are busy doing more things at a young age, I am not sure--I am no biochemist. This brings up a interesting question. Can we also see this rise in obesity the result of the aging baby boomer generation? Because the obesity problem is a world wide phenomenon, one can also see the baby boomer generation as a world wide event having wide reaching effects.
The obesity in the young and the poor may be the result of craving foods that have high taste appeal. Food is a cheap thrill for limited budgets. Fast foods and snack foods are engineered for maximum taste appeal. Such foods have a high amount of fat and high fructose corn syrup. This form of sugar has an interesting effect on the appetite. The mechanism that monitors blood sugar responds to high fructose corn syrup as if it were a fat. For some reason, it takes longer for the "I am full" command to go to the brain. One can sip down a 22 oz Cola at Pizza Hut, eat four slices of Pizza and still have "room" for a stop at Baskin Robins.
If that 22 oz Cola were made from cane sugar, you might have only wanted one slice of pizza. I have seen some pizza restaurants offer unlimited Cola refills, which I am sure those 22 oz Colas become 44 oz and at least four slices of pizza. I am wondering if high fructose corn syrup may even suppress the appetite suppression response.
It may be that corn sugar may someday be used only for gas tanks and not those thirsty tummies.
Yawn. RWJF needs some new talent on the payroll. You're even more boring than Ray. Hope he's enjoying his rest.
Thanks for the good resources. They would be of value to everyone on the Free Republic who wants to live their years out of the bondage of fat.
You're welcome. Your posts indicate practical success. I've had success with Atkins and exercise in the past, then an injury curtailed the exercise and a daily glass of beer trashed all the prior success. Annoying. I had dropped from 219 (36% fat) to 174 (20% fat). I'm at 196 (25% fat) at this time. No more beer. I'm pleased with the results of working out with kettlebells. When I'm on a business trip away from the bells, the body weight approach advocated by John E. Peterson in The Miracle Seven: 7 Amazing Exercises That Slim, Sculpt, and Build the Body in 20 Minutes a Day (Paperback) is a fine backup.
Gaaackk!!!! I am going to pay for that poorly thought out post (to which I have admitted several times) for a while, aren't I?
These kids parents should be brought up for child abuse!
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