Obesity epidemic looms: Experts

[CBC News]

Clinics and hospitals across Canada need a major investment to prepare for the impact of an obesity epidemic that could outweigh the effects of smoking on the health-care system, experts have warned.
An estimated 11 million Canadians are overweight, and about half a million of them are morbidly obese and in need of treatment, including surgery, said Arya Sharma, scientific director for the Canadian Obesity Network.
Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman travelled Thursday to Hamilton to announce $700,000 in funding to help a local hospital treat an additional 500 morbidly obese patients next year.
Hospital officials were grateful for the money, but conceded they and their counterparts across the country are going to need a great deal more help in the coming months and years.
Full story
What are you doing to prevent obesity or to deal with an existing obesity problem?



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[s243a]

What a stupid question. What does the author want me to do? Pay someone’s ticket for fat camp?

 

[Stretch]

[SIZE=+1]Today consumers flock to sweeteners because of the epidemic of obesity. Aspartame and MSG have been proven to be the cause of this epidemic.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]http://www.dorway.com/walton2.txt[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]An eight year epidemiological study by the University of Texas, Sharon Fowler, linked diet drinks to obesity. Even in the congressional record of May, l985, protest of National Soft Drink Assn, it was admitted that aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates so you gain weight.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]http://www.wnho.net/open_letter_dick_adamson.htm[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]So what is happening is the consumer public is consuming a product that is triggering obesity to try and prevent it.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]http://www.rense.com/general77/nutra.htm[/SIZE]

 

[s243a]

[SIZE=+1]Today consumers flock to sweeteners because of the epidemic of obesity. Aspartame and MSG have been proven to be the cause of this epidemic.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]http://www.dorway.com/walton2.txt[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]An eight year epidemiological study by the University of Texas, Sharon Fowler, linked diet drinks to obesity. Even in the congressional record of May, l985, protest of National Soft Drink Assn, it was admitted that aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates so you gain weight.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]http://www.wnho.net/open_letter_dick_adamson.htm[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]So what is happening is the consumer public is consuming a product that is triggering obesity to try and prevent it.[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]http://www.rense.com/general77/nutra.htm[/SIZE]

I've heard sugar also makes you crave more food. Do think that just maybe people who need to lose wait might be more likely to consume diet products. What is the real cause of obesity is people need more exercise. Send them to work on a farm or something.

 

[Cosmo]

Actually obesity is one of the top and most difficult issues doctors face in treating patients.

I'm fortunate. I live on sugar, chocolate, butter, cream ... my cholesterol is way low, my weight stable at a place where I (and my doc) are happy. I have friends who eat salad, whole grains, drink their 8 glasses of water a day, exercise (shudder!), watch their food intake ... and are officially obese. One of these friends used to ride her mountain bike 80 klicks a week and weighted twice what I did. I lived with her and her family off and on for a few years and know for certain she wasn't a "closet eater" or some such.

It's a serious health issue that not only affects the body but the body image/self esteem of people. Some people simply cannot lose the weight no matter what they do. I think it's something that needs the same sort of research as any other disease. There has got to be a reason that some people can eat what they want, in any amount they want, and never become obese while others live under a strict regime and gain.

 

[Unforgiven]

Helping people lose weight is a growing industry. Why kill the cash cow? Making them guilty and feeling bad about themselves is part and parcel of that money making machine.

Fat is the new whipping boy. Can't be racist, can't be gender bias, hell you can't even hate on the fags no more. But it's open season on fatty. And you know fat people choose to be that way, mostly they are just stupid and really they are just picking up the slack left by the blacks, the jews, the queers, and the chinese and those god damned working women. A natural progression.

I wonder who is next on the public pillory, short people? You know they deserve some public ridicule.

 

[tamarin]

Obesity is quite the remarkable thing. Go anywhere to a public event or spend an hour in a mall. The weight challenged are everywhere. Lifestyle has to be a leading culprit. And a diet riddled with comfort foods. Like smoking, it is a health care curse. And like smoking it will have to be stigmatized. (Granted, I'm a hypocrite there but I enjoy pushing the envelope.) Why should the public, faced with an enormous health care tab, be less vigilant about vilifying the fat than they are their equally costly cousins?
What must scare the docs in charge is that smokers usually start in their teens. The fat start well before.

 

[tamarin]

And what is especially galling for many smokers is to be lectured on their habit by often pudgy to grossly proportioned general practitioners and their aides.

 

[Curiosity]

OK - I'll worry about this tomorrow - I refuse to miss my Starbuck's weekend snack with my friends - and all the calories I am about to consume!

Fat loss / obesity is becoming a prosperous industry - for private gyms, special diet foods, pharmaceuticals, doctors/liposuction, and all the other horrors of diet gone wild.

The fear generated seems to contribute to overeating...

 

[tamarin]

And what gets me often about this epidemic is that's it's occurring at the same time there's a push on for everyone to be sexy and sexual and titillating and exciting (and excited) until they're 90. Slam me but I don't see anything sexy or sexual about an obese woman. The country is full of them and I assume, given society's emphasis on sex these days, that someone finds them "interesting." Either I'm all phucked up (which certainly is a possibility) or study figures on who's getting what are full of as much lard as many of their participants.

 

[Impetus]

I wonder who is next on the public pillory, short people? You know they deserve some public ridicule.

Hey! At 5'6" I consider myself "concentrated".;-)
Like TNT...I'm dynomite!

Muz

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

We all are doomed.....unf...ya made me lol....good post....
muz..it's that damn rocker gene..we gotta nail that one down and learn how to splice it in....

 

[Unforgiven]

And what gets me often about this epidemic is that's it's occurring at the same time there's a push on for everyone to be sexy and sexual and titillating and exciting (and excited) until they're 90. Slam me but I don't see anything sexy or sexual about an obese woman. The country is full of them and I assume, given society's emphasis on sex these days, that someone finds them "interesting." Either I'm all phucked up (which certainly is a possibility) or study figures on who's getting what are full of as much lard as many of their participants.

Sexy is attraction and attraction is subjective. So you don't find obese women sexy. That fine, no one said this was a requirement did they? If we start to get rid of anything someone doesn't like, then there will not be anything left.

For some, sexy can have a deeper meaning than the stereotypical 18 year old girl with 1000cc breast implants and a body builder with a horse's cock.

There isn't a person alive that can't be picked apart for all their flaws. While I fully support a healthy lifestyle, I know there are many many factors that have an effect on that. And what's most important is that people find happiness in themselves for who they are, rather than just how close they fit into someone else's notion of who and what they should be.

 

[eh1eh]

LOL, Don't worry Muz, everyone looks taller on stage.

Also, Randy Newman, RIP, already aired the plight of short people. They've got no reason to live apparently

 

[tamarin]

Is that like finding your happy place?

 

[eh1eh]

There isn't a person alive that can't be picked apart for all their flaws. While I fully support a healthy lifestyle, I know there are many many factors that have an effect on that. And what's most important is that people find happiness in themselves for who they are, rather than just how close they fit into someone else's notion of who and what they should be.

Hear hear.

 

[Tonington]

Lifestyle has to be a leading culprit. And a diet riddled with comfort foods. Like smoking, it is a health care curse.

I think that's it entirely Tamarin. Fast paced lifestyles with less perceived time for healthy food and activity. Do you know how many of my friends do not know how to cook a decent meal? They can just add water, milk and butter, and they can use a microwave. My mother was teaching me basic skills like cooking before I even had home economics class. Does anyone know if that is still part of the regular junior high school curriculum?

 

[eh1eh]

Hey Tonnington, My daughter just finished grade 8 and here was no home ec. class at all.

 

[tamarin]

Everyone should learn how to cook. You have to remember you're not always going to be good looking! Men and women alike at 40, that lack basic culinary skills, are almost as useless as the proverbial boobs on a bull.

 

[karrie]

Obesity epidemic.

Hmm.

I question if obesity is really truly the epidemic we're facing. As I watch healthy woman after healthy woman around me start complaining of the same things...

"My back hurts, my joints hurt, my muscles are achy and weak."

Woman after woman whose exercise routine is cut shorter and shorter, whose energy wears down, all before they're even hitting the age of 30.

And as all this pain starts creeping up, so does the weight. As they're getting more and more exhausted, they have a harder and harder time staying fit.

The weight is coming secondary to a host of other conditions, a symptom in many cases, not a cause. And yet, the medical community gets hung up on the weight, and is failing to adequately treat the initial problem. Rampant fibromyalgia, a variety of arthritic conditions striking at younger and younger ages, and the medical community is failing to address it well.

Instead we bitch and villainize the weight. And while some people are fat strictly for bad lifestyle, with others, they really truly need proper medical treatment which will acknowledge the weight as a symptom, rather than the cause of all the world's ills.