Now Britain is the fattest country in Europe

st.angelo

Full Member
In the news today it said that Britain is now the fattest country in Europe and fifth in the world! :eek:

Britain is the fattest country in Europe and the fifth most overweight of the world's 33 most-developed nations, a new study has revealed.
A quarter of all adults in the U.K. are obese and a staggering 66 per cent of men and 57 per cent of women are overweight.
The U.S. remains home to the fattest people on the planet, with more than three out of ten men and women clinically obese.
It is followed by Mexico, Chile and New Zealand and then Britain.

That's very worrying isn't it? I had a hospital appointment today and had to wait in my consultants small waiting room. There was eight chairs and there were two empty chairs, the other six were sat on by other patients and I was shocked that each one was extremely overweight.

My consultant is a gynaecologist and all of us waiting to see him were from a broad spectrum of society and all different ages ranging from early twenties to sixties/seventies.

When you walk down the high street you see a range of different sized people and I've never noticed before how many overweight people there are but sitting in this waiting room made me realise that people from all walks of life and different stages in their lives are becoming as a nation, fatter!

We (on minimins) are the lucky ones because we are making a change in our lives. I never ever thought I'd get fat. I was a skinny child, slim adult until around 5 years ago when I started putting on weight and it now scares me how easily I gained the weight without even thinking about it until I finally faced up to it that, yes, I am fat!

How have we as a society got like this? After I went to hospital I went to Tesco and started looking at everyone in there and I would say that slim people were definately in the minority! Yet 20-25 years ago I would say it was probably the opposite. Fascinating stuff- for me anyway!!!:)

 
We live in a fast food/junk food society where the supposed antidote is low fat manufactured processed food. The fast food revolution started in the 70's, with the advent of ready meals and the advent of fast food chains such as Mcdonalds/Burger King. Food became instantly accesible and loaded with carbs and fat.

We were suddenly able to consume large quantities of calories in a very short time, for instance a Burger King double whopper with cheese packs 963 calories and most people would have that with fries and a fizzy drink, and its gone in minutes. You could have a roast dinner and a pudding for less calories, far more nutrition and far less fat, and requires actual eating instead of wolfing down.

Then came the explosion of own transport, everyone had to have cars, people no longer walked anywhere. Excercise took a nose dive, calorie consumption soared.

This was closely followed by the low fat revolution where the food manufaturers who were supplying this junk, saw an opportunity to cash in on the resulting mess of obesity, by convincing us that all we needed to do to put it right was eat their water laden offerings toted as 'diet food'.

This all happened in the USA before the UK, we were about 10 or 15 years behind them, and now we are catching up fast.

The low fat revolution took hold and so did binge eating and binge dieting. I firmly believe that the low fat revolution was a very bad thing, on a par with the high fat revolution. Now we are hooked into it, I know of peope who only feed their kids on mcdonalds, so much easier to jump in the car and grab burger and chips from the drive thru than actually go shopping and cook real food.

Jamie Oliver has highlighted the dangers of what children are now fed in schools, and he is my personal hero. But our children are growing up on junk food and dont know any better, and so the fat society gets even more embedded into our culture.

Its the world we live in, but we dont have to accept it. Its down to the individual to stop buying and eating fast food, to buy real food, and cook it and enjoy it. To teach the children to enjoy real food, and make the changes for the future.

But then it comes down to time constaints, we work, we rush around, we dont have time to shop and prepare and cook real food. Time is limited and everything has to happen in an instant.

In our society we all want the best for ourselves and our families, but with this comes the sacrifice of leading healthy lives, and so we end up doing the worst thing we can possibly do, putting the health of ourselves and our children in mortal danger.

Type 2 diabetes is soaring, and is brought about by poor diet/overeating and lack of excercise. I personally have eaten myself into type 2 diabetes. I am guilty of this crime too.

We are bombarded with adverts for food, we are being brainwashed by the supermarkets, the fast food joints and ultimately the food manufacturers. We want the instant hit, the rush of the carbs and fat and now its so easy to get it. Supermarkets are open 24 hours a day, Mcdonalds are open 24 hours a day. Who NEEDS a Big Mac at 3am?

How do we deal with this? How can anyone fight this? Are we so brainwashed by it that we cant fight it?
 
Hi Lynn, what a fantastic post, you are spot on!

As a child, having a bar of chocolate was a treat. Over the years I've said to my children that it's much cheaper to buy a multipack of say Flakes for example. So instead of buying one flake for each of my two children as an occasional treat, when I was doing my supermarket shopping I would pick up a multipack of flakes and they would be eaten at home by all of us (me included) as just snacking in between meals. Both my children are slim and active but I have had lots of conversations with them about how junk food may not be affecting their weight now but it will when they get older.

I posted elsewhere on minimins about how I recently went into WH Smith which is a book/stationery store but when I was in the queue to pay I was surrounded by chocolates!

Going on lighterlife lite has really opened my eyes and made me aware of all the crap I've been eating over the last few years. I am in the process of totally re-educating myself and my family.

School dinners for me back in the 1970's and 1980's meant that you had to finish what was on your plate. It has gone from stern dinner ladies making you eat up to nowadays at my childrens school where they have pizza and can buy crisps etc.
 
Its so confusing for children these days, when there in infant primary school there told to finnish there plate then when theyre older, the same dinner ladies are saying, careful not to get fat, i do think we need to sop people getting obese but i still cant belive that some schools have banned cake/custard as its deemed unhealthy, its a classic school dinner,
 
This is a fascinating thread. I watched some of jamie olivers American road trip and the degree and quality of the processed food the kids there eat is completely shocking and horrifying. And we are not far behind here. I think processed food and sugar are the main cause of the obesity crisis.
I have 3 small boys, and in our house we try to eat nearly all recognisable food - ie you can tell what the original ingredients were. I make large amounts of things like homemade pasta sauce and soup so we always have 'fast food' in the freezer. But my kids eat too much sugar and I know this. I need to address the amount of 'treats' they eat, but I don't want them to put chocolate/sweets on a massive pedestal either, so I'm not really sure what the answer is there. They probably have one small bar/biscuit daily.
I saw a programme the other night about a 13 year old American girl having gastric bypass. She did really well but what totally horrified me was when she got home from the hospital, her whole family came round to 'celebrate' - with huge buckets of KFC. I couldn't believe it, it was wrong on soooo many levels, and just made me want to cry for her:(
One thing that totally horrifies me too is junk food advertising aimed at kids, how can our government still allow this to bs allowed - it's criminal!
 
recently bought a baked potatoe/beans from a chipshop it was 3,50 my best mate had chips, sausage, gravy and a bap for 3,40.


its cheaper to buy fatty food rather than lighter options, same at pub, bottle of alcopop at my club near me is 2 for 3 quid whilst diet coke is 2,50 each
 
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