A few months ago I attended the birthday party of my friend’s son at a fast-food restaurant. My close friend is a highly educated person who surely knows the negative effects of fast food on health but for several reasons, such as practicality and his son’s preference for fast food, the party was held at the chain restaurant.
The birthday boy is a visibly overweighed child and his father told me about his reluctance to consume vegetables and fruit and his lack of physical exercise.
The unhealthy eating habits partly explain why the number of people suffering from obesity and being overweight is increasing.
This issue was addressed recently through a campaign called “the breakfast week” that promoted healthier eating habits. However, the issue requires not only ceremonies but more importantly continuous programmes.
The overweight and obesity epidemics have increased significantly in the last three decades both in the developed and developing worlds, including Indonesia.
The phenomenon inspired well-known nutrition epidemiologist Barry Popkin to publish an important article “The World is Fat”, which appeared in Scientific American Magazine.
Overweight and obesity are health concepts in which weight and height are used to calculate a number called the body mass index (BMI). For most people, BMI is a good estimate of body fatness. A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight. Furthermore, a BMI of 30 or higher is categorised as obese.
To get a better picture of this overweight and obesity phenomena, let us look at current data. Worldwide, there are more than one billion overweight adults, and at least 400 million of them are obese.
In addition, more than 40 million children below five years old are overweight globally.
Abundant studies have shown that obesity and being overweight increase people’s susceptibility to various health problems, including coronary heart disease, hypertension and stroke, certain types of cancer, non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis and gout, pulmonary diseases and sleep apnea.
In conjunction with World Health Day, which fell yesterday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has picked food safety as the theme of the commemoration, giving the world body an opportunity to call on governments, manufacturers, retailers and the public to play their parts in ensuring that the food people eat is safe.
WHO has repeatedly warned that obesity and being overweight pose a rapidly growing challenge to people’s health. Indeed they are replacing more traditional health problems, such as undernutrition and infectious diseases, as the most important causes of ill-health. WHO also reminds us that obesity is one of the most blatantly visible, but unfortunately neglected, public health problems in our modern world.
The obesity pandemic frequently coexists with undernutrition and creates a double burden in many parts of the world, particularly in developing countries.
Numerous studies indicate the escalating global epidemic of obesity and being overweight as “globesity”, which spreads rapidly. If no immediate actions are taken, millions of people will suffer from various health problems.
It is also noteworthy that contrary to common assumptions, the overweight and obesity epidemic is not restricted to the industrialised world. In fact, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems in developing countries.
Take Indonesia as an example. The number of overweight adults in the archipelago jumped from 12 per cent in 2007 to 21 per cent in 2010. About 50 per cent of those overweight adults suffered from obesity. However, underreporting should be taken into account and, therefore, many people believe the numbers do not represent the reality.
It is estimated that 30 million Indonesians are either overweight or obese, compared to 27 million people four years ago.
This data correlates with the facts that non-communicable diseases such as stroke, hypertension and diabetes have also replaced communicable diseases as the leading cause of death in the country.
The Health Ministry reported that deaths from non-communicable diseases accounted for nearly 60 per cent of all adult deaths in 2007, up from 41 per cent in 1995.
There are many factors contributing to the significant rise in overweight and obesity cases in developing countries like Indonesia.
The frequent consumption of high-fat foods, imbalanced diets and a lack of physical activity as a result of the increasingly sedentary lifestyle among many of us are of course the main culprits.
Moreover, we should take into consideration the rapid social changes in the last few decades which also changed people’s eating habits. For example, in the past we used to eat at home, but now we frequently eat out and we often tend to consume unbalanced or junk food.
The increasing popularity and prestige of fast-food restaurants may also contribute to this phenomenon. It is worth noting that Indonesia’s relatively high economic growth has enabled millions of people to eat fast food and to reduce physical activity due to their growing sedentary lifestyles.
The data and phenomena may correlate with the 2010 Indonesian Health Profile indicating that obesity is more prevalent in households that spend more per capita, including those with higher education and those who live in cities.
However, learning from the experience of many other countries, obesity also affects the poor — and frequently more severely — including those in rural areas. The wide availability of cheaper version of fast foods and the lack of access to nutrition information and services may explain this phenomenon.
Unfortunately, the government’s responses to overweight and obesity are insufficient, sporadic and ceremonial. So far there are only small-scale initiatives from several cities in promoting higher consumption of local fruit and vegetables in schools and exploiting multimedia to lure children to consume only healthy food.
At the household and individual levels, educating children and leading by example on having a healthy diet and on the daily consumption of healthy foods serve as the greatest investment for their future. Children also need praise for choosing healthy foods.
Those are all things we can do to combat the obesity and overweight epidemics. — Jakarta Post
* The writer, who obtained a PhD from the Melbourne School of Population Health, the University of Melbourne, Australia, is a lecturer at the School of Public Health, Hasanuddin University, Makassar.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
