Why are there so many overweight and obese British women?

[EvaHara]

Genuine post and I promise I am not a weight troll. Recently I was on a cruise and couldn't help but notice that many other British women onboard - especially younger women - were considerably overweight or obese. Some were in fact huge and easily as big as some women I saw in the US when there a few years ago.

What has caused this rise in overweight people, particularly younger women? I don't remember there being this many overweight/obese people even 10 years ago.

I am not judging, just curious.

That said; I agree I don’t think you can blame the weather but as I posted previously I live in one of the healthiest cities in the UK, 2nd highest green space available in the country and it is noticeable how everyone walks frequently in all weather, including the children!

I look just like them when I wear my big knickers 😂

Maybe if the government actually made our wages a decent wage we would be able to have a comfortable life and not need to buy a lot of crap from the supermarket for dinners and we could eat healthy all us nurses , caseworkers , nursery teachers etc work our ass off for what really? What the point

Let's stop blaming trauma and abuse as an excuse for the general population. For individuals, maybe. I flatly refuse to believe UK children are more abused than countries which don't even have a social service or benefits or any safety net whatsoever. That's real first world blindness. However bad the UK is right now many countries are far worse.

I don't know where you are shopping, but it's cheaper in tesco, morrisons, lidl and aldi to buy a packet of cheap biscuits than a bag of apples, so you are wrong on that. If you are poor trying to feed a few kids you are going to choose the biscuits over 4 apples! Plus no one likes being fat, it's horrible, although I an mid 40s no health problems and i'm quite fit(can even still do the splits) it's still depressing gettting looked down on by people like you!

It doesn't take a genus to work out that getting people walking is going to help. Instead we encourage out of town business parks impossible to get to without your own transport.

When I started work the office was in the city centre, commute was an hour each way. 15min walk to station, station to work 10min same in reverse there's an hours walk without thinking about it.

Getting to work now in out of town pretty business park - cheap rent and rates - car takes 15-20mins
To do it by bus it would take about 90mins each way. Which makes it impossible to pick-up from afterschool care too.

The things about whether it is self-control vs "government".

I think the answer is probably both.

On the one hand, we each decide what we put in our mouth. Apart from a small percentage who are really poor, we could all eat like our great-grandparents, with lettuce sandwiches and an apple and no snacking.

On the other hand - each person only has so much brain power to use toward self-control. And there is so much food now that is designed to entice us. People in previous generations did not have to constantly decide NOT to do these things.

That being said, I don't believe there is much the government can really do. I think the most helpful would be certain cultural changes which would have to be made by citizens. Changing to seeing snacking as negative. Stop giving kids constant snacks. Really encourage sitting and eating meals, not constant busyness and eating in the car to get to kid's activities. Even going back to the idea that eating on the street, or a bus, is rude, would likely help. I think sit down lunches for children in schools, and in workplaces, might help too. After lunch yoga or walking as a cultural norm might be positive.

I wasn’t really talking about doctors making comment, it was more society generally. However where I think doctors can be unreasonable is in effectively delaying other lines of investigation because it’s “ probably just that they are fat.” That doesn’t preclude them from addressing any pre-diabetic concerns.

Also education policies in the 80s, turning practical subjects such as cooking (and sewing etc) into 'marketable skills' involved removing most of the cooking and nutrition element of these subjects (my DD did GCSE textiles and can neither set a sleeve nor use a paper pattern!) to be replaced by 'design' and 'market' skills e.g. design a pizza topping. Ulterior motive to this was to provide a market for processed foods.
And who did this? Right-wing governments.

I would say with food though, it is a bloody minefield in terms of checking out all the things added and knowing what they may or may not do to you.

With the lettuce sandwich though the bread is going to be pretty expensive to avoid the added chemicals that make you fat. The grandparents didn’t have to contend with that.

Healthy meals aren’t all necessarily time consuming. Nothing easier than throwing together a salad, or throwing some chicken, veg and stock into a pan. And no-one needs to put ‘lunches’ together these days, as kids are at school for lunch, and parents at work.

it simple. junk food is cheaper, more filling and tastier than healthy food.

No more complicated than that

Women in particular often having to balance work, childcare and housework and don't have a huge amount of time for exercise classes, healthy cooking etc

Right, I said Ireland was similar to the UK in terms of activity levels (and hence obesity).

Most people in the countries I mentioned live in cities, just like most people in the UK do. Metro Copenhagen has the same population as Birmingham for example, but the entire city is designed to make healthy choices much easier: excellent and cheap public transport that goes where people need to go, massive cycle and walking infrastructure, excellent schools so no reason not to just go to your (easy walking distance) local school, extensive and free/cheap sports and recreation facilities.

When people talk about an obesogenic environment they need look no further than major British cities which are completely designed around the car, where people need to drive everywhere (schools, shops, work, leisure activities) because the public transport is crap and the walking/cycling provision is non-existent. And of course if everyone is car dependent then the roads are jammed all the time anyway so you just don't bother going to that gym class you signed up for, or taking kids to their football practice.

Surely parents could and should educate their kids on what’s healthy and not healthy? Not down to the government to parent.

I think this is a very fair point.

A poster above mentioned other generations eating lettuce sandwiches and apples, and I’m sure those foods might have featured. But so did plenty of other things we would deem unhealthy now. Who has a grandmother who didn’t serve crumbles, clafoutis and other puddings? Or have tins full of baking? My grandparents had morning and afternoon tea - usually with shortbread, scones or similar. I think much of the issue is additives and also portion sizes combined with a screen based lifestyle.

Probably the type of people who like to go on a cruise, on the whole, do not exercise and are there for the AI food and alcohol. You excepted OP.

Seriously, though obesity is alarming, and the fact that the Government largely are not helping educate people and infact encourage the food industry to promote their calorific UPF snacks constantly to kids and adults is a massive challenge. Apps like YUKA can help avoid UPF, which will greatly reduce anyone's calorific intake - just avoid anything out of a package with ingredients not found in your kitchen.

We'd be emaciated if we did that! One chicken between 12 people ( and then soup made from.the bones the week after) a lettuce leaf, a glass of water and half a biscuit a day, eating off a saucer...

Doesn’t the chicken have to be organic though to avoid hormones pumped into them that impacts your weight?

I had to get my DD’s chicken salad ready this morning, I have to make these lunches at least 3x a week as she tells me the food at school is unhealthy except on two days.

Not quite true. There are more 'overweight' men but when you hit the 'obese' category there are slightly more women.

So agree! And a bag of carrots or apples is not a meal - and you need to be able to cook the meal - i.e. have the time and expertise. Eating healthily is an art which we have managed to ease out of our culture (e.g. loss of proper cookery lessons in schools, replaced by 'market skills' such as designing yoghurt pots!). It is no good tins of chickpeas being cheap (actually, even in Aldi or Lidl they are not) if you have no idea what to do with them. Ditto bags of dried pulses etc. People who blame the poor for not eating healthily do not understand the impetus behind their purchases (this included my late DH, who noted that queues outside fish and chip shops were longer in poor council estates - he had no idea how to feed a family of four and, love him though I do, he would not have been able to produce a meal that children would eat!). If everything is work and four walls, and trips to the pub, then an expensive TV to watch, and a good package of programmes, and snacks and tasty (high fat, high sugar) food is the only way that life is brightened up.

Right, but my children wouldn't want to eat salad for dinner. Especially in the winter months. And fresh chicken is expensive. Basically when I was working with young children it was about rushing hom and throwing chicken nugs and oven chips in the oven, steaming some broccoli. It's very hard when you are working and wages are low.

I've recently begun losing weight and have adopted an active and healthy lifestyle. I've also overcome binge eating (finally) after being a binger for most of my adult life.

Like an evangelical ex-smoker who's always banging on about the dangers of nicotine, I now notice obesity much more than I did before. I'm aware I'm judgemental and hypocritical (in my own head anyway) and I know nothing about the lifestyle, struggles and health issues of the people I'm noticing much more now than I did before - I was (and, to a certain extent, still am) 'fat' in the eyes on both the textbook and many casual onlookers.

Humans observe, judge and comment on one another constantly. It's human nature.

I cook from scratch pretty much every single meal. No jars/ packets etc. We do however, both have a treat pretty much every single night which isn't really a treat because it's so frequent.

I'm pregnant right now but before getting pregnant my BMI was 'overweight'

I think the problem is that what actually is over weight and what is seen as over weight are two very different things. Before getting pregnant with my 1st I was happy with my weight/ size and in society I would have been classed as 'average' even viewed as having a nice figure. But I was about a stone over weight.

Also so many people say 'BMI' isn't a good measure. It is a blunt tool which lets face it, is correct for most people of course there are exceptions. I have always been at the higher end of normal even in my early 20s when I was 'skinny' but dismissing it doesn't do anyone favours

@Goldenbear I bought some pre-cooked chicken breasts last week and the amount of additives in them was unreal!