AIBU - With this new data on obesity and the NHS is it time to have some honest and difficult conversations?

[IAmADancer]

New data from a ‘landmark study’ has show that obesity costs the NHS around 14billion a year and that 2 out of 3 adults are obese.

I know this is a difficult subject but the numbers are pretty clear. With the cost of living crisis and a general requirement for both parents to work now to support themselves how do we support people to make the right choices and tackle a growing problem?

Im really interested to hear people’s opinions on what we can do with such stark figures laid bare.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/17/cost-of-obesity-twice-those-who-are-healthy-nhs/

@WiddlinDiddlin

what would you like the Health Service to do about your issues ?

These threads are always eat less, move more - despite that just not working for some people. NHS dietary advice is often rubbish and some people actually need to eat more to lose weight, more of the food that will encourage a healthy gut biome.

Go to your doctor and tell them you are really not all that bothered about food but you cant lose weight by dieting and they will just say you are eating more than you think. We deliberately have smaller plates, not standard dinner plates. I rarely have processed food. No chance of any investigations unless you are actually grossly obese. I've paid for some tests privately but while the results are abnormal enough to be treated in the states that isnt possible in the uk. My gp even said something was normal when even the NHS admits it wasnt, just not bad enough to be treated. I'm sometimes tempted to try and become obese so I could finally get some investigation. My gp wont even help by suggesting what tests I could pay for privately.

15 minutes cities are not the answer. More school teaching of exercise that can be performed anywhere rather than overemphasis on team games would help introduce healthy habits. Promoting parkruns would help. Free seated exercise classes for those with health conditions that make exercise difficult. Tax any meal - restaurant or takeaway - that is above 75% of the normal daily calorie requirement.

For anyone else struggling with their weight - ignore most NHS advice, look for diets that control blood sugar levels. If you cant exercise as such fidget. Take a probiotic or prebiotic. Avoid low calorie anything, it wont help.

This is a very insightful post.

I also think we cannot ignore the manipulations made to food, especially highly processed food. It smacks of what the tobacco industry was doing with cigarettes.

I really appreciate everyone who has contributed to the post. I have read every page and every response and I’m actually feeling really positive. I do think change is happening and the more knowledge we have the more it empowers us to make changes. I also think that we are clueless (and I don’t blame people for this, I blame the food corps, the marketing etc) about what we are eating, where it’s come from and how it’s made.

I was just as guilty of this and really thought I was doing the right thing and had a good diet, everyone told me that as well. But as an example when I look at what I’ve had today,( porridge with whole milk/almond butter/nuts and seeds, coffee with full fat milk, two mini egg frittata ) with what I would have usually eaten by this point In the day it is eye opening. I am just not that hungry anymore, I don’t feel the need to snack constantly or feel hungry 30 mins after I have eaten.

We need to bring back home economics into the classroom to help set kids up. The NHS needs to address it’s woefully out of date advice. We need to stop labelling people slim when they are actually normal size. We need to support and educated people to help them make better choices. We need to lobby the government to stand up to the big food corporations pushing UPF’s and ultimately we need to be willing to take some responsibility for ourselves and our own health.

It would be great if there were local supermarkets where only healthy food was available. I don't mean UPFs like in many "health" shops but seasonal fruit and veg from local growers, bread baked on the premises without any preservatives, frozen fruit and veg of course and fresh and frozen meat and fish, fresh herbs and whatnot. Cut out all the crisps, sweets, snacks except for things made from pure ingredients without all the crap. Proper ice cream, fudge, high quality chocolate etc would be much better and would be expensive making them something people would only eat occasionally. I've a very sweet tooth but I'd rather eat high quality stuff occasionally than cheap crap daily.

People complain about not having time to cook and I see that, but I also see parents rushing back from school daily to take their dc to various activities. Some kids have something every single night/day. It's no wonder parents have little time but that's a choice and about priorities to some extent.

Are you sure it's safe for you to be driving then?

I love President, so this is very good to know!

We need to add plastic food wrapping to that.

They manipulate oestrogens and play with appetite.

I would say it's most definitely the minority but happy to be proved wrong

I would agree.

I have an underachieve thyroid.

I usually eat one meal a day (occasionally am so hungry that I'll have a couple of poached eggs - maybe once a fortnight or so). I don't drink very much and rarely eat fast food, but I am borderline obese.

My one meal isn't a 6,000 calorie curry or anything like that -it's a"normal" dinner. I don't count calories, but yesterday for instance, I had a couple of small potatoes, peas, a yorkshire pudding, carrot and two sausages (thick ones). I had a matchbox sized piece of cheese and a couple of Ritz crackers to finish.

Tonight I'm having pasta with homemade sauce (tin of tomatoes, 1 onion, garlic and chilli). I've got raspberries for pudding and am really looking forward to them 😁

Eating like this, being constantly hungry, has kept my weight pretty steady at 11 and half stones (I am a shortarse - I am as fat as butter to look at). If I are more I would get VERY fat, VERY quickly.

Many people can't restrict their diet because of medication etc.

Dumple has dieticians and consultants whom Dumple takes all advice from. So that isn't the problem apparently.

Sorry to hear you are struggling. I agree that eating low carb can be expensive.DH lost 2 stone initially but now he’s at target weight he needs a lot of calories from protein and unsaturated fats which tend to be expensive. He can’t have pasta, bread, rice, potato because they send his sugars sky high but he is ok with root veg and cruciferous veg - so we substitute cauli rice(buy it frozen) cauliflower cheese, mashed celeriac or swede+carrot, sweet potato.
It’s symptomatic of the wider problem that processed carbs are a cheap source of calories.

Last post was @truthhurts23

diet and walking. That’s all you need
you do you, but I prefer to focus on strength training, make sure I have some high intensity cardio and include regular yoga to maintain range of motion.
I'm not saying walking isnt beneficial but for me it's not enough on it's own to maintain optimal health as you get older (I'm late 50s)

I am an AHP in a rehab ward with mainly older people and it’s becoming more and more of an issue. So many of us have shoulder and back problems from moving and handling large patients, they need specialist equipment which is much more expensive and it’s so much harder to get them mobile again.
I was at a meeting this week where we were discussing the choking guidelines because it is no longer possible to get your arms around a lot of people to do abdominal thrusts if they are choking.

Many of our patients would have been quite active when younger particularly the ones that had manual jobs but then they retired and were less active but their diets and calorie intake didn’t change. Lots of them are also bored and lonely and when it’s just them on their own without a family to cook for just live on upf’s, biscuits, cake etc. as it seems too much effort to cook properly when it’s just for them and when you are bored getting another biscuit is something to do.
In previous generations families tended to be more involved with each other and ready meals weren’t available so either they’d have had to cook something for themselves or family would have had to provide a home cooked meal and biscuits/ cake etc would have had to be homemade. Of course the issue back then was underweight elderly people!

I would like to see some sort of restrictions on frizzy drinks though as anecdotally drinking large quantities seem to be a common theme between our bariatric patients.

Surely the NHS needs to stop providing ultra processed foods and ready meals to patients in hospital and to stop hosting fast food outlets within hospitals.

I'd ban all energy drinks that teens are consuming regularly. It's not just teens but they are certainly very popular in high school kids.

Could be hypothyroidism. . The threshold for thyroid being diagnosed is ridiculously high. So many have sub clinical thyroid but because their numbers are considered normal they aren't helped

A lot of it is the shite - upf - that’s marketed here and prob in all first-world countries.
I’ve always been interested in nutrition but until v recently I had no clue how badly most people eat due to what’s in their food & it just doesn’t fill you up.
That’s what needs to change.

This can't be emphasised enough.

I think we just snack through the day now. I think it’s more that we don’t tolerate hunger and we love our morning coffees, give kids raisins as they wander round a museum, have an afternoon biscuit etc. Shops like Boots and clothes shops stock chocolate so we can eat whatever we want whenever we went.

I grew up in the 70s. Food was crap. We had sausages and processed food, like Smash and angel delight. But people were not as overweight at all. Because there simply wasn’t the culture of eating all day. It was okay to just eat three meals a day and be hungry until dinner. That does not seem to be the case now.

Ultimately we are human and a lot of rubbish food tastes nice. Give any population unfettered access to delicious processed food and it is likely they will eat it and gain weight.

@GaiaSophia I love the sound of this, but what about arteries becoming clogged? Is that also something that they deduced from the trials on herbivorous animals? (Genuinely asking, not arguing!)

thank you for the suggested vegetables, x its very confusing information out there , some t2diabetics can have some small amount of carbs and be fine but my body doesnt react well to carbs at all

And I truly believe that dieting messes with your body.

My twin sister had an abusive relationship in her teens, and she developed anorexia. Since then, she has starved herself or binged and her weight has gone from underweight to overweight. Many times.

We are now in our 50s. Our diets are pretty identical. Healthy-ish meals, minimal takeaways but a penchant for crisps, chocolate and cakes on occasion. My BMI is just below 20 and hers is around 26. We have the same genes and eat very similarly (spend lots of time together) and are similar activity-wise though she goes hiking too.

I think her erratic eating has really messed with her metabolism. That is my unscientific conclusion anyway.