emily eats

The Observer on Sunday had an interesting article on obesity last Sunday. They were questioning whether obesity is a self inflicted condition, after it arose that a 70 stone (980 lbs / 444kg) man here in Britain  is costing the tax payer a lot of money. People are as upset at paying for obese people’s treatment as they are paying for illnesses relating to drinking and smoking. The article goes on to discuss how obese people are regularly ostracized by society.  Fatima Parker, the founder of International Size Acceptance Association UK, is quoted as saying that you can be healthy at any size. I agree to an extent, but I don’t believe that anyone could suggest that a 70 stone man, such as in this example, could ever be considered healthy.

What do you think? Is there a stage when you pass the threshold of being considered healthy and what size is that? I definitely think there is.  But for me the biggest tell-tale signs indicating unhealthiness are if facial features are drooping, the bags under the eyes are dark and it’s cumbersome to move the body – obese or not.

Finally, The Observer article listed a few “fun” facts:

1,010,000

The number of morbidly obese people in England.

10%

of six-year-olds are clinically obese. The number of obese children has tripled over the past 20 years.

4,619

obesity operations – gastric bands, balloons and stomach stapling – were carried out last year.

£4.2bn

Primary care trusts’ obesity costs in 2007, set to double by 2050.

1 billion

Number of overweight adults in the world. Some 300 million are obese.

One in four

adults is obese; and nine in 10 will be overweight or obese by 2050.

9lbs

Average extra weight that a child carries now, compared with a child 20 years ago.

5,056

The number of people admitted to hospital as a direct result of obesity in 2007-08.

£600m

Size of NHS drug bill for diabetes, the largest in primary care. Rising obesity has caused a sharp rise in type 2 diabetes.

~ Incidentally, the Guardian maintains a whole section on obesity here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 22:11 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.