A Senior Research Practitioner at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital has revealed that he believes modern day life is a contributing factor to the amount of obesity in the United Kingdom.
Conor Bentley, nutrition and dietetics specialist, says that modern day life is not helping to reduce the number of people becoming overweight. Skipping meals, doing less exercise and desk based jobs are some factors to gain weight. Usually, people who don’t prepare their meals are more likely to go for high-fat sugar snacks.
Data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) showed that 61.7% of adults (people aged 16 and over) were overweight or obese in 2014. In the West Midlands, the number reached 66%.
For the last 21 years, the number of people becoming obese has almost doubled:
Prevent children suffering from malnutrition
One of every 5 children aged from 10 until 11 is classified as obese. Conor Bentley suggests educating children with healthier habits while running ads on television or radio and being more active after school.
Conor Bentley remarks that takeaway meals lead us to consume excessive high-fat and high sugar food instead of vegetables, fruits, porridges or milk. In these cases, under-nutrition is replaced by the wrong sort of nourishment.
For instance, in Birmingham, there is one takeaway restaurant for every school. Use the map below to see how many takeaways are near your local school:
Keeping a healthy body mass index
Obesity alone is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more while overweight is BMI of over 25. Conor Bentley says that we should try to keep a healthy BMI, which is considered between 20 and 24.9.
The BMI is calculated through a person’s age, weight and height and it should be a start point before visiting the doctor. There are plenty of online calculators, such as the National Health Service (NHS) healthy weight calculator.
The waist girth is another criterion to calculate obesity proneness, attributed to a 94 cm or more waist for men and 87 cm or more for women.
Long-term problems
According to Conor Bentley, developing obesity can lead to increasing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular health diseases, breast or bowel cancer, and strokes.
However, gaining plus weight is also related to mental health and malnutrition problems, costing the NHS money due to the attention required and longer stays.
Conor Bentley says that there is no quick fix for obesity but there are some tips for a healthier lifestyle:
“Begin from a specific time period calculating your steps until reaching the 10,000 steps per day. Incorporate that to other activities such as preparing your food, not missing meals and avoiding high-fat and high sugar foods.”
See also: WATCH: 5 small steps towards a healthier lifestyle
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