New obesity data for Europe are expected to be announced on Wednesday by the World Health Organization. The new figures set to be released at the European Congress on Obesity in Prague are causing major concern.
The latest information say that Europe will be confronted with an obesity epidemic of enormous proportions by 2030.
According to the projections, by 2030, one in every three British women will be obese. Almost three out of four men, or 74 percent, will be overweight, while 36 percent of them will be obese.
An approximate 77% of Greek men are expected to be overweight by 2030 while the share of obese women in Greece will double in the next 15 years, to 40 percent in 2030. Sweden also has problems with obesity, 26 percent of men will be obese by 2013. The same projection is valid for 36 percent of Spanish men. Ireland also has a problem, with 89 percent of men being likely to be overweight, as will 85 percent of Irish women.
If you have a body mass index (BMI) over 25 you are overweight, while obese means a body mass index over 30.
The Netherlands appears to be handling the situation better than many other European countries. Less than half of Dutch men (49%) are projected to be overweight, and only 8 percent obese, by 2030, a slight improvement from the data released back in 2010. For Dutch women, the share of overweight will stay more or less stable in the next 15 years, reaching 43 percent in 2030, from 44 percent in 2010. The obesity rate in Dutch women is expected to drop from 13% to 9% during the same period.
“Although this was a forecasting exercise, it conveys two strong messages — first that the availability and quality of the data in countries needs to be improved, and second these predictions show that more needs to be done in terms of preventing and tackling overweight and obesity”, said Joao Breda, WHO Regional Office for Europe.
“Our study presents a worrying picture of rising obesity across Europe. Policies to reverse this trend are urgently needed. Although there is no ‘silver bullet’ for tackling the epidemic, governments must do more to restrict unhealthy food marketing and make healthy food more affordable,” added Laura Webber, UK Health Forum, London.
The latest projections analyzed data from research conducted in all 53 countries of the WHO European zone.
Image Source: The Guardian
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