LIVE WELL FOR LONGER
The big fat surprise
Are you starting the New Year with a fresh resolve to shift some body fat and shape up? If so, you’re not alone. Here in the UK, being fat (to use the straightforward, but politically incorrect term for obesity) is a major health concern. Not only can it be both debilitating and depressing to carry the extra burden, but being overweight is also unhealthy and one of the leading preventable causes of death. It carries a significant cancer risk, notably liver cancer, which has soared three-fold in the past 20 years. In 2016, the rapidly rising rates of childhood obesity in particular were described by the UK government as a ‘national emergency’. And the UK has proportionately more obese and overweight adults than pretty much anywhere else in Western Europe.
Despite the increasing awareness of healthier ways to fuel our bodies, obesity rates are soaring. Data published in 2018 show over 28% of UK adults as being clinically obese (with a body mass index, or BMI, greater than 30), with a very worrying 62% of us classified as overweight or obese (with a BMI of 25 or above). Adult obesity rates have almost quadrupled in the last 25 years – and show no signs of slowing. Six out of ten women in the UK are overweight or obese, a major challenge to health authorities, who predict 11 million more of us will be
