NHS costs attributable to overweight and obesity are projected to reach £9.7 billion by 2050

[hellymissy]

So many posters keep banging on about people not wearing masks, spreading the virus and overwhelming the nhs, people breaking rules etc which is obviously an issue - but we also need to focus on some bigger issues around the long and short term sustainability of the NHS a d consider ways to fix them.

Extracts from government website shows that;

“UK and international evidence suggests that being severely overweight puts people at greater risk of hospitalisation, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission and death from COVID-19, with risk growing substantially as body mass index (BMI) increases.

The current evidence does not suggest that having excess weight increases people’s chances of contracting COVID-19. However, the data does show that obese people are significantly more likely to become seriously ill and be admitted to intensive care with COVID-19 compared to those with a healthy BMI.

The UK-wide NHS costs attributable to overweight and obesity are projected to reach £9.7 billion by 2050, with wider costs to society estimated to reach £49.9 billion per year.”

If anything will cripple the NHS it’s the direct and indirect impact of obesity on ICU units, and long term pressure obesity puts on the NHS.

Seriously, What else can we do to tackle obesity?

**this is NOT a fat shaming thread, purely a thread to redirect some peoples attention towards some of the real issues around COVID

As a result all we do is keep telling fat people “just eat less and move more it’s easy” and ignore all the reasons people aren’t managing to do that. If people won’t accept that the being obese can often be a symptom of something else and treat the actual cause you’ve no chance

Of the circa 40m overweight and obese people in Britain, how many do you think are that way because of ‘something else’?

Something else other than liking the party food, eating too much of it and not exercising enough to burn it off. That’s physics, by the way, not fat shaming.

They can’t all be the way they are because they were abused as children or they eat their feelings or live in poverty. There must be a significant chunk who know that they are damaging themselves but can’t be bothered walking to the station instead of driving, or don’t want to break their KFC or four pack of Double Deckers for £1 habit.

I don’t recall anybody upthread saying that eating less and moving more was ‘easy’, by the way. Of course it isn’t. That’s why you need willpower to do it.

However, even if as a country we did go with the barmy idea of offering free CBT for all (I noticed upthread that somebody even thinks it should be offered to everyone as a preventative measure...great news for the counselling industry, eh?), the individual still has to make decisions over what he or she puts in their mouth.

sirfredfredgeorge, sorry, but you are wrong. The UK has one of the highest rates of child obesity in Europe. 10% of 5 year olds and 20% of 10 year olds are obese.
As you can see, the rate doubles during their time in primary school.

Obesity is the second biggest cause of cancer in the uk but no one looks at the obese with the disgust they do at smokers

IT IS NOT. Obesity doesn't CAUSE any of these other diseases they are comorbidities of metabolic syndrome.

OBESITY is a symptom all on it's own and makes you more likely to get cancer ALSO but it doesn't cause it. This harmfully incorrect spreading of information has to stop.

@sirfredfredgeorge kids definitely are! ;

Using National Child Measurement Programme data relating to primary school children, NHS Digitall_ states that:
In the 2018 to 2019 school year, around three-quarters, or 76.5%, of children in reception (4 and 5 years old) were a healthy weight. In year 6, around two-thirds, or 64.3% of children (10 and 11 years old), were a healthy weight. Overweight and obesity prevalence (including severe obesity) was higher in year 6 (34.3%) compared to reception (22.6%).

And even if kids aren't - they should still be educated then as that will stick with them.

For example - you do not wait until a teen is pregnant to discuss why it's not a good idea to get pregnant at 15, you educate them before it happens.

you don't wait until a kid is hooked on drugs to tell them drugs are bad

@hamstersarse I am not a vegetarian but its healthy diet, I know a lot of vegetarians and vegans and most of them are slim, active and perfectly healthy. My sister is unwell because she has shitty migraine genes as do I and our mother and only she is veggie.

I know that at the moment there are diet wars with those who favour keto and low carb but most health professionals, dietitians and those who actually study the science of food would say that these low carb or keto diets are more harmful than vegetarianisim even if they help you lose weight in the short term. Of course there are lots of snake oil salesmen out there promoting them.

ivykaty44 yes, the Dutch planning system deliberately avoids out of town retail parks somewhat and supermarkets are smaller Tesco Metro types (but obviously AH, Blokker, etc!) situated in neighbourhoods with a mixture of other specialist shops too. So people can readily walk or cycle to them. It's a deliberate planning policy.

When you consider that even top athletes have to restrict their diets to be lean in season, yet the average person seems unable to correlate eating excess calories with gaining weight!

My father was unfortunately a person who suffered from obesity (not Dutch but Scottish). I remember the doctor pleading with him to do a 10 minute daily walk and explaining the risks of amputation due to his type 2 diabetes. But he just wouldn't help himself, and died at 54 after multiple heart attacks. Born completely healthy. I've never eaten fried food in my life or been tempted to smoke - his example out me right off. It's sad as well for a child having a parent who can't do so many things. My grandparents used to take me for long walks because even in his thirties, my father was too lazy to go. It seems so strange looking back - he was so different from the rest of the family.

We need to look at our food production, what is being put in our food and how it hinders making healthy choices.

You say chicken breast is healthy - however, due to modern farming techniques, a food that used to be mostly lean protein is now majority percentage fat, not protein. Apparently, you would have to eat roughly 4 times as much chicken today to get the same nutrition you would have got in the 1970s.

And that's before all food is stuffed with additives, corn syrups etc.

OK, so medical stuff aside, I still haven't met a happy fat person. I'm not talking just overweight or obese, I'm talking morbidly obese.

I can get enjoying the odd pie or whatever, but what is it that fails to kick in to stop that escalating?

Could it be a lack of self worth? Mental problems? Because it is contrary to survival in light of all of the evidence.

At times in my life when I am happy being me, I drop weight without effort. I just don't think about food until my body tells me I need to eat.

When I have been abused, raped, shamed, bullied, my weight and self hate increase. The feelings come before the feeding.

Plus the antidepressants prescribed are also anti anorexia drugs, or were when I was first prescribed them.

What I am saying is that it remains my belief that being overweight is the biggest sign of a lack of self care and self love. It has its roots in mental health.

@Pukkatea you make a very good point. My husband just paided £10 for 4 lamb steaks the other day because anything cheaper is rubbish and mostly fat and water. Its very easy for those of us with a bit of money to make those sorts of choices to judge others who buy the sort of low cost food we'd recoil from because they can't afford the choices we do.

The way this thread is going though people will come on next and say "well they shouldn't be poor then, it they male the sort of choices that lead to poverty then why should my taxes go towards helping them, people like that are just too lazy and set in their ways to be well off"

People really are too kind, too sympathetic in modern day UK, Thatchers legacy is alive and well.

And yes, it should be taught in school in a non accusatory matter.

The body is not a closed system BTW and the laws of thermodynamics do not apply. Exactly the reason that HIT is so successful for weightless.

@chickenyhead I'm obese and for me its not that straight forward. I am not happy with my weight but I am happy in other parts of my life I have a very happy marriage and home life. I was never abused but like a PP mentioned I do suffer from chronic pain and that impacts on my ability to exercise as much as I used to. I'm a good cook and our meals are healthy but I do have a sweet tooth and probably do use a cup or tea and a buscuit as a pick me up when I'm struggling on a bad day. Coke is also another thing that will give me the energy to push through on days I've hardly slept due to pain. I know these aren't the best choices but exhaustion and pain erode your will power and you do what feels nessecery in the moment to get by.

I am not sure how I feel about having my weight linked to mental health issues because for me my pain came first then things like weight gain and low self worth because of the change in how i look and my inability to live a normal life due to chronic pain. I have lost the career I love, friends and so on to a progressive disease that is out of my control.

On the rare periods I have no or little pain for a few days to a week its like I am a different person and its much easier to make healthy choices and get out for a walk. I'm happier but its also harder to cope with the inevitable decline into pain again when it happens.

I’m not surprised kids are overweight though, we live in a good area & I see kids leaving the house eating pringles in the morning. In a small village we’ve got three chippies, three Chinese takeaways, two pizza places & two cafes. There’s only 5000 residents here. How can 5000 people need 8 takeaways?. The council planning should never have approved so many.

@chickenyhead I know the tablets you mean, I’m weaning dh off them because of the hunger. There was a woman on R4 who ran a clinic for morbidly obese people & she said so far she hadn’t had one patient who didn’t have a history of severe trauma, usually in childhood.

I have a few thoughts about things that might help:

1. Stop allowing marketing and advertising to push any form of junk food.
2. Stop the sanctimonious 'I just have a small piece of chocolate when I crave it and then eat not more' nonsense which is of no relevant whatsoever as newsflash people have different bodies so what works for one does not work for all (and therefore the fact that you don't find this too hard does not mean others don't).
3. Make it socially unacceptable to spout naïve nonsense about health food just costing £3 for meat and veg. Really - how much do you think actual cheap food costs?
4. Stop the marketing nonsense which tells us that if you go to a friends house for coffee you should take biscuits and that kids should have party bags after parties etc.
5. Make it socially unacceptable to suggest charging people for weight related issues as that suggests that they personally are at fault rather than realizing that this is a collective and societal problem
6. Make it shameful to think that telling someone they're fat is part of the solution. Unless they did not already know this is just bullying
7. Address the discrepancy between the haves and the have nots in society which is a foundation for some of the problematic issues.
8. Protect our green spaces and stop allowing marketing nonsense to suggest that you can't play football in a field anymore and instead need an expensive 3g pitch which you have to rent.
9. Teach people to cook proper and nice food at school. I can't really and clearly have no aptitude in that area but might have done better if I had been taught some skills when young.

10. Free school meals for all but proper and edible tasty stuff. My kids junior school food was rank. The low sugar desserts were inedible and have turned them off the idea of that sort of food. Better to do fruit rather than waste time and money on that stuff.

The body is not a closed system BTW and the laws of thermodynamics do not apply. Exactly the reason that HIT is so successful for weightless.

Whilst not all food is metabolised in the same way, to claim that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to the human body is silly.

Smokers and drinkers use the NHS more than obese people, yet the Government do nothing about this because of the tax they receive from it.

Inflammation is a cause of many chronic pain conditions

One way we get inflammation is from food

@WithoutATtrace

Smokers and drinkers use the NHS more than obese people, yet the Government do nothing about this because of the tax they receive from it.

That’s very true. Neither are essential for life.

It’s a want not a need & both are harmful to the body. I met a man furious the lymphedema clinic had told him to stop drinking a bottle of red every night because “red wines good for you”.

What about the cost of all the women who insist on having babies?
Most will end up net takers throughout their life time (fat or thin).
In a world already overpopulated with finite resources, why aren’t we trying to stop this huge drain on the public purse?

Whilst not all food is metabolised in the same way, to claim that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to the human body is silly.

It is not silly. Our bodies are much more complex than a straightforward combustion engine

We have multiple hormones regulating how the energy that we take in is used.

Everyone knows this when they think about it properly - when you are doing calorie control there is not an exact relationship with how much energy you consume and how much weight you will lose.

The hormones manage your energy more like you would manage your household budget than a combustion engine uses it's fuel.

So for example if you have 1000cals to play around with (like a £1000 a month) the body will allocate that energy to the places that are best for survival.

So it may stop putting energy into hair (hair loss), it may stop giving the brain as much energy (brain fog), it may stop giving you as much energy for warmth ( always cold).

A combustion engine does not do this, it is straight in straight out.

The straight 'reduce calories' thing is not as effective as it intuitively seems and anyone who has persevered at calorie control knows this.

Weight loss is about ensuring those hormones are firing off correctly and you can only do this through the types of foods you eat

The largest nationwide study of obese (BMI 30-40) and morbidly obese (BMI 40+) people by KCUL , show that for those women with obesity 1:124 successfully diet back to a healthy weight. (below BMI 25) . For those morbidly obese it's 1:677. Most shocking of all is the fact that for the tiny tiny percentage of people who achieve this - 78% put it all back on and more within 5 years.

It doesn't need to be like this. For the severely obese - those who are most likely to cost the NHS the most due to associated illnesses such as Type 2 diabetes, Severe hypertension, hip replacement needs ets ..there is a solution. Bariatric surgery .

A gastric bypass or sleeve (NHS rarely do bands anymore because they are easy to 'get round' ) .. pays for itself within 2 years. It is STILL the ONLY long term , sustainable effective weight loss method available. For sure a tiny percentage fail. Lose it all and put it all back in again - but the percentage compared with diet is reversed . After 5 years over 82% have sustained their healthy weight.

So why do more people not have the procedure ? I can tell you from experience.

1. Predjudice (GP, Society , friends, family .- who stupidly believe it is the easy option)

1. Lack of GP encouragement/knowledge of referral process.

1. Long winded process artificially stretched out over 12 months with 3 appointments. One consisting of getting weighed . The next about how to read food labels (very patronising and underlines the narrative that fat people are stupid).. and a third to actually discuss the most appropriate surgery. - could all have been done in one visit.

1. Spread information about the process - especially the brilliant 2 year post op follow up.

1. Generally make the process far more accessible to all. Who qualify.

@WithoutATtrace

Smokers and drinkers use the NHS more than obese people, yet the Government do nothing about this because of the tax they receive from it.

They don’t actually. Type 2 Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions and costs the NHS more than any other condition. The tax revenue from tobacco sales is considerably higher than the cost of treating smoking related diseases, so the NHS makes a profit.

@hellymissy

These are good suggestions - why do you think the government does nothing to implement?

Unhealthy/ unhappy people are easier to control? Large numbers with long-term health issues = fat profits for pharma companies and all their rich friends if they can privatise the NHS?

Here's another hot potato...you are describing vegetarianism as something that is healthy. There is a lot of evidence to show that it is extremely unhealthy

utter rubbish

[quote hellymissy]@JacobReesMogadishu I agree with some of your points but I do not agree healthy food is more expensive.

A pack of chicken from Tesco two chicken breasts is £2, vegetables cost £1-2

It's that people ignore the benefit of cooking from scratch/are time poor/can't be bothered amongst other factors to get home and cook a full meal. [/quote]
Seeing as you apparently don't think that better access to healthy food or affordable workouts is the option, what do you think would work better? These are the suggestions being made by academics and doctors, but I presume you have a better idea?

Perhaps a fat tax. Or no NHS access if you've got a BMI over 30. Or we could just put all the fat people on an island and when they're fit enough to swim home they can come back.