Obesity Epidemic Needs Immediate Response

Obesity specialist Philip James urges health officials and public to act against obesity epidemic. The report shows that the disease must be tackled immediately.

Some specialists and doctors are claiming obese and overweight patients to choose healthier lifestyle and loose weight. However, Philip James suggests that complex efforts are needed to tackle the disease. Instead of blaming patients, health officials must take measures to make healthier lifestyle possible. The report by Philip James mentions affordable prices for healthy food, ban on junk food ads and town planning among these measures.

People must be able to choose healthier food rather than junk food, but current prices don't allow most of us to consume healthier food. Junk food advertisements are very professionally designed to affect public psychologically. Town planning must keep public away from cars and traffic, giving them possibilities to walk around and exercise.

Another research conducted by Rena Wing, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, shows that those who managed to loose weight, needed much more efforts than generally described by doctors. The research examined 5000 US men and women who lost up to 30lb and managed the new weight at least a year. These people have had strict low fat, low calorie diet, exercise, less TV watching.

Examined people had only about 1800 calories daily. They followed the diet every single day without giving a break and without relaxing. These people burned about 2700 calories a week, which means 28 miles of weekly walk, from 60 to 90 minutes of walk a day. These people have been weighted regularly and taking immediate measures when gaining weight.

The research declines the opinion that small changes in general life, such as using stairs instead of lifts and limiting food, may help loose weight. Those who lost weight and kept it off needed much more efforts to have positive results.

"There's no way around it," said Rena Wing. "If you want to lose weight and keep it off you need to really change your lifestyle, particularly if you're overweight or have a family history of obesity. The obesity epidemic won't go away simply because people switch from whole to skimmed milk. They need to substantially cut their calories and boost their physical activity to get to a healthy weight - and keep minding the scale once they do."

Obesity is a serious problem of developed countries: about 1/4 of women and 1/5 men in UK, about 33% men and 35% women in US are obese. Not only adults suffer from obesity, even children are overweight. This is why health officials need to take serious measures against unhealthy eating habits and encourage healthy lifestyle.