Why are nearly 25% of British women obese?

[twitterer]

On the news this morning we are told that British women are the fatest in Europe, why? Of course it is down to eating too much and exercising too little. But other populations don't suffer so badly. I wonder if there is more (healthy) pressure from society, men, employers and others to be healthy

food is cheaper biscuits are cheaper blame it on pound land and iceland it's where all the mums go well this mum anyway

hmmm butterscotch angel delight was such a treat - one packet shared between four of us - can't be many calories at all even made with full fat milk.

I believe that the food culture that emerged post war is to blame. It is only a hunch but I don't think many people would have been in the 'obese' category before WW2. What happened post-war? Industrialisation of food production, emergence of convenience foods, changes in work patterns for both men and women, centralisation of food distribution leading to the advent of huge supermarkets, a switch from daily shopping to weekly shopping, a mentality of 'want' rather than 'need'.

No need to say much more really but,

Like much else in our society, our food is being produced to make the maximum profit - leading to the use of the cheapest possible ingredients. Imagine how different things would be if our food was produced to make the largest possible contribution to the health of the population rather than to make a huge profit for someone somewhere?

People just don't get hungry nowadays - lattes every five minutes. I have said before on here - saw a top obesity specialist talking who said people Di not have rumbling tummies any more - they just snack! It's healthy to feel hungry 'starvibg' but no one does....

This needs to change

I mentioned the specialists words to my teenage dc and the very next day was tild ' mum guess what - my tummy DID really rumble today!' iwas suitably non - plussed

Folk should try it - try not eating between meals

Meals -' findus crispy pancakes ' not the issue - it's the latte chocolate bar etc etc etc that is

To me, one of the most mesmerising things of Uk mums is this....
Ok for women that have a fulltime job and are out of the house from 8 am till 7 pm....but, for mums that are housewives, i know many of them that spend loads of time out. They take children to schools, then they go to a coffe shop, where they stay few hours, than they go to do shopping (clothes that probably will bring back, because thta is another Uk trend: you buy somethingthat you are not completely sure,but then u change your mind). At 3,30 they go to pick up kids and either thyey go back to shopping centre or they go home and they quickly put some fish fingers or microwable rubbish meal .
I mean: never thought about staying a little bit at home to cook? You just need to stay one hour at home every2 or 3 days and you will have a decent meal for everyone.

I think there are a few reasons.

A big one is that there is no taboo here about being overweight. In contrast, we embrace curviness and tell people a size 16 isn't big or whatever when in fact most people wearing that dress size are likely to be close to or over the top limit of healthy BMI. I used to date an Italian guy. His mum cared about what she looked like in a swimsuit. A LOT. And she looked pretty damned good for a woman of 60ish.

We have a snack culture. We snack on the streets, we snack in offices. Someone is always bringing cakes into the office. This never happened when I worked on the Continent. No one ate at their desks either. And apart from one national mobile snackfood that everyone munched on the streets, no one ate walking along or on public transport like people do here.

A lot of people don't understand food content or know how to cook. My home ec lessons at school were useless and my mum never taught me much, despite not being a bad cook herself. I'm learning stuff from my husband who did learn from his mum.

LMAO Sea74 I never spent all day at the shopping centre when I was a SAHM, and certainly didn't throw a few fishfingers under the grill.....

I cook everything from scratch, with organic veg most of the time. I always did - I did A level Home Ec and know a lot about food.

It's the portion sizes and stealth empty calories that are doing it, coupled with the lack of encouragement to exercise. While in the UK I fell victim to this.

My DS does twices as much PE in school than the UK, and is allowed to break into a sweat to do it. Then he plays outside all afternoon, and usually walks for 30 mins with us a day.

Binfullofm...are you obese? Well, in that case the article is not about you.

US has lots of overweight women too doesn't it?
What's the common denominator? Fast food? Supermarkets?

And food is leisure. Not just food.

I was, before I moved. Now my weight is decreasing, even though I eat more cheese, butter and bread than in the UK (not more in portions, just a little more regularly.

And I never lived to the stereotype you are portraying. Neither do either of my college mates who are also overweight...

Oh and kudos for asking me a question, and then answering it for me

There's no single cause. I think it has a lot to do with the relative cost of food. Food is very cheap in the UK, people spend about 5% of their income on food. People can afford to buy a lot of food. Add to that the amount of junk and convenience food available, the long hours people work, portion sizes, the sheer number of McDonald's and Greggs, the sophistication of supermarkets' marketing strategies and lifestyles becoming more sedentary and average weight goes up.
The supermarkets and food retailers sell complete crap very cheaply. People buy it and eat it. They get fatter.
The government's solution? Oh, yes leave food industry to self regulate! Fantastic idea!

I also think people are having to eat a lot more food these days, to make up for the fact that what they do eat doesn't contain many nutrients.

Crappy cereals for breakfast, not enough fat and protein

Every article you ever read in the popular press "this is the best to eat because it's the lowest in fat /calories" totally omitting the fact that it is low in nutrients and will only fill you up for five minutes.

I eat a sandwich with butter and protein - fills me up until the evening. I eat the same without butter, fills me up for two hours.

We eat too much. Don't exercise enough. And make excuses

Binfullof...
Look we agree on the portions thing. I said that earlier. They are too big.
I still do not agree with you that "cooking from scratch" does not make you put weight on.
It is all in the ingredients. If i cook shepherds pie, casserolle, bangers and mash, they are food that contains butter, flour, sauces.... They fattening.
In italy we follow the mediterranean diet. We dont even know what butter is, or even margarine, we only use olive oil, we use herbs. Example, on a tomato salad we do not use the "salad cream". We only put oil and origano. That' s it. Ok for portions, but if you eat a small portion of food made with butter and cream, that will give you more calories than , eg, a minestrone, a grilled chicken with side dish of mushroom with garlic, or a greek salad.
Hope to have beenable to express myself. Sorry for my english.

sea74 has a point about the coffee shops and cafes - but it is not just SAHMs who use them. It's people on their way to work spending a small fortune buying their daily take away coffee full of calories. This has become a daily treat.

And there is too much reliance on ready made food, again it's not just those lazy SAHMs but many people from all lives who rely on them.

I agree with PinkPannetone that treat food is everyday food now.

And there manifestly is good and bad food, if you're eating it in the quantities that we do now. If you're not overeating (which we mostly all are) then you can eat what you like. I think that applies to hardly any of us though. If you're overeating so that you never feel even vaguely hungry then you're better off with raw veg or summat that'll go straight through you.

I Know for myself that the thing lacking in my life is movement and exercise. I once went on holiday to a rural place without a car, and we walked for 36 miles in a week (child too). We were pleasantly tired at the end of it. Living the way we do in the city, we'd have to really organise life differently to get that much exercise. You can't just do normal modern life and exercise much at the same time, generally.

sea74
you have nice tomatoes in Italy! Ours are soggy and pretty tasteless...

To add - we eat overprocessed crap and believe the nonsense spouted by food manufacturers (low fat / healthy etc)

E.g Breakfast Bars!!! Who eats them???

And we make excuses

Also I went away for a while and for various reasons we couldn't ever snack.
We had 3 smallish meals a day. It was fine, nobody collapsed, nobody ran out of energy.
I tend to think our bodies can take a lot less food and a lot more exercise than we think they can - we hardly ever need to test ourselves on either of those. But we're evolutionarily adapted for it.

Lots of people drive everywhere and don't walk much which means many people are not getting much exercise. I am convinced having failled my driving test and given up on the whole thing has helped me stay slim!! or at least that's what I tell myself...

Yes, think snacks have a huge amount to do with it. The office I work in is full of snacks. People actually seek to curry favour with colleagues by the quality of the snack offerings they bring in!!!!!!

They are always carb loaded blood-suga- surge type snacks (biscuits / cakes / fudge etc) so you eat, get that little surge of energy & then want another one half an hour later! No wonder everyone gets type 2 diabetes.

Like LePrune says we are perfectly capable of eating 3 meals without a whole load of sugar ingestion in between.

a few things to add / repeat..

• comfort eating. Very easy to cheer yourself up with food when you feel like shite .

• Short working lunches means no time to eat a proper meal in the middle of the day and everyone scoffs a sandwich as soon as possible. Where I work the full-timers get 40 mins for lunch . I am so glad I'm p/t!

• kids don't get as much time for their school dinners either do they? They need time to eat a good lunch and let off steam for a while.

• people don't walk much anymore. Some of my neighbours drive the short distance to the local supermarket, I tend to stock up every day and carry it home. Obviously not a suitable solution for everyone but anything less than a mile (20 mins) is considered a short / barely noticable walk for me. I drag the kids out for walks at the weekend, we're usually the only people out without a dog.

• too much crappy food / takeaways on sale everywhere, 24hrs a day.

That said I have never been overweight. I'm too hyper and enjoy being healthy, my parents always made us eat fuit / veg too spoilsports.

No one has mentioned the long working hours, long commute and stress.

I don't think that people are eating snacks because they are 'stupid'. The people with large cuppuccino and choc muffin in Sturbucks, with biscuits in the office and mars bars in the tube are not thick, they are overtired.
It is easier to look after yourself and to like yourself when you have siesta and mid day sex

Also smoking hasn't been mentioned. When i go home, at coffee time there is no carrot cake and scones with cream but everybody lits a fag. Thats no better than cake. (the siesta and mid day sex is good though)