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Professor: Rise in UK Obesity Worst Epidemic in 100 Yrs

  • Spence Cooper
  • October 11, 2011

Lord McColl, a former professor and director of surgery at a London hospital has warned UK officials that the rise in obesity is the worst epidemic to affect the country for 100 years. “It’s killing millions, it’s costing billions and the cure is free – eat less.”

“What a strange world it is,” said Lord McColl. “Half the world is dying of starvation, the other half is gorging itself to death.”

Lord McColl accused politicians of refusing to admit that the cause of obesity was over-eating: “In order for an obese person to lose weight — bearing in mind that most of them can’t exercise because they are so overweight — all he has to do is eat less.”

“I recognise it’s not the job of politicians to tell people how to live their lives,” said Lord McColl, “but it’s surely the duty of government to speak the truth and give a lead. By continuing to stress that exercise is the answer, politicians are misleading the public.”

Rising obesity levels are by no means confined to the United Kingdom. In its annual World Disasters Report, the International Federation of the Red Cross IFRC reported there were 1.5 billion people suffering obesity worldwide last year, while 925 million were undernourished. In other words, on a global scale, obese people now outnumber the hungry.

“If the free interplay of market forces has produced an outcome where 15% of humanity are hungry while 20% are overweight, something has gone wrong somewhere,”secretary general Bekele Geleta said in a statement.

Obesity by Country

Obesity rates can be an indicator of a nation’s food trends, and cultural influence.

The statistical record for obesity rates by country varies, depending on the source. For instance, OECD Health Data lists the top 5 countries suffering from obesity as the U.S., Mexico, United Kingdom, Slovakia and Greece in that order.

But the World Health Organization’s results of health surveys taken between 2000 and 2008 on world obesity, lists the 10 fattest countries of the last decade (with of the percentage of the population that is overweight) as follows:
[Source: Global Post via expatify.com]

(1) American Samoa, 93.5%
(2) Kiribati, 81.5%
(3) U.S.A., 66.7%
(4) Germany, 66.5%
(5) Egypt, 66%
(6) Bosnia-Herzegovina, 62.9%
(7) New Zealand, 62.7%
(8) Israel, 61.9%
(9) Croatia, 61.4%
(10) United Kingdom, 61%

Both sources list the United Kingdom in the top ten. The one factor most of these countries have in common is the consumption of processed foods in a globalized food market “which tends to suppress traditional diets as cheaper processed foods from the U.S. and Europe flood store shelves”.

Is Eating Less The Solution?

Besides regular exercise, is the solution to reducing levels of obesity in industrialized countries simply a matter of eating less, as Lord McColl claims, or is the answer likely to be more specifically what types of foods are being regularly consumed by the population at large?

High fructose corn syrup is the most common sweetener used today in processed food because it is cheaper and easier to transport. Many giant food companies, like General Mills and Kellogg’s, use high fructose corn syrup in their food products.

High fructose corn syrup is linked to an increase in weight gain, insulin resistance, type II diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, because of the way our bodies metabolize it.

Excess fructose is metabolized to produce fat because fructose does not need insulin to be metabolized; glucose is processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate in the liver and muscles.

Fructose requires a different metabolic pathway in order to be metabolized because it skips the regular metabolism of carbohydrates or glycolysis. “As a result, the fructose becomes a source of acetyl CoA’ in its unregulated form which, when combined with unstimulated leptin levels, can lead to substantial fat deposits”

Princeton researchers discovered that rats which had access to high fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to basic table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,”said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly.

The Princeton University research team concluded that excess fructose in HFCS is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

In an article by Antonio last year, he cites a published commentary from the Journal of the World Public Health and Nutrition Association which discussed how “ultra-processed”foods are the cause of obesity.

Antonio notes that “over-processing transforms food into a completely different state. The integration of chemicals and a slew of processes takes the food farther from its natural condition.

“This consequentially leads to losing its original nutritional profile. Ultra-processing takes the lost value of the food by replacing them with certain features that are supposed to appeal to the modern consumer.”

UK Allows Fast-Food Companies to Craft Obese Policy

Professor: Rise in UK Obesity Worst Epidemic in 100 YrsIn 2010, Britain’s Department of Health announced its intention to allow fast food companies like McDonald’s and KFC, as well as PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, and Mars, to craft its official government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease.

Along with leading U.K. supermarkets, health and consumer groups, McDonald’s, KFC, PepsiCo, and Kellogg’s will “draft priorities and identify barriers, such as EU legislation, that they would like removed”.

“This is the equivalent of putting the tobacco industry in charge of smoke-free spaces. This isn’t big society’, it’s big business,”said Jeanette Longfield, head of the food campaign group Sustain.

Fast-Food and highly processed foods are made with high levels of high fructose corn syrup, and the link between these foods and obesity is well established.

Does Britain’s Department of Health really expect diet and health problems to be solved by processed food manufacturers and fast food companies? What tangible solutions can a focus group on calories accomplish headed by PepsiCo?

These are the questions and issues Lord McColl and others should be exploring in the United Kingdom if they’re serious about wanting to reduce obesity levels. The solution to reducing UK obesity goes well beyond simply eating less.

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