Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Obesity Pandemic

The 10th International Congress on Obesity was held in Sydney, Australia recently. From Reuters:
Evolution and the environment, not just gluttony, has led to a global obesity pandemic, with an estimated 1.5 billion people overweight -- more than the number of undernourished people -- an obesity conference was told on Monday.

"The mounting epidemic of obesity in children would see many die before their parents," said Kate Steinbeck..."This is the first generation in history where children may die before their parents," Steinbeck told the conference.
What an incredible historic change---more people overweight than undernourished?

Sedentary lifestyles and foods lacking nutritional value while being energy dense are wreaking havoc with the human body. People engaging in hard physical labor can afford to eat larger amounts of food, but people who expend little physical energy while eating junk will surely find their waistlines growing. Furthermore, many convenience and "fun" foods lack real nourishment, causing a body to still "desire" more food as its nutritional needs have not yet been met. (This isn't rocket science.)

The Congress on Obesity, however, feels more research is needed to combat life-stealing obesity and to discover the "environmental and genetic contributors".

Hat tip: The Drudge Report

1 Comments:

At 9/05/2006 9:28 AM, Blogger Jeff the Baptist said...

Yeah, we're getting fatter. I'm not sure how much fatter though. Most of these studies use Body-Mass Index, so the results are going to be skewed high anyway. With BMI fat people are fat and muscular healthy people are fat. Only the skinny people are skinny.

I wonder what this study would look like if we used metrics like percentage of body fat.

It kind of combats the starving masses description of the third world though.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home