Blog 5 9:45AM BST 15 May 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8514091/Junk-food-Britain-costs-the-NHS-more-than-cigarettes-and-alcohol.html
Summary
The new ways of living have an enormous effect on the amount of money that is spend by the NHS. The economic costs of a lifestyle that often leads to obesity is almost twice the amount spent on health problems caused by smoking and alcohol. Since the 70’s the number of adults smoking has halved, while the number of people suffering of obese are quadrupled. Heart diseases, most cancers, diabetes and strokes are related to obesity.
Many Briton’s have a lifestyle of couch potato’s and don’t realize this lifestyle is due to various life threatening diseases.
Opinion
Obese is a problem in many countries. There are probably several reasons for this expanding problem. Science does not have a solution for it yet, because one does not know the cause. There are some social studies on this issue and some believe that the main cause is the attitude of the people. However there are also people who do not suffer of overweight, but do suffer of health problems caused by bad eating habits. It is to easy to blame overweight people for their bad health. I believe it is necessary to make people aware of the positive consequences of good eating habits. This probably has more effect then focussing on the negative effects.
I agree with healthy eating habits. I believe it to be even more important than having the proper BMI. I know quite a number of people, myself included, that are a bit overweight but never having a sick day in their life. A lot of people are too heavy, but do actually eat healthy, although probably too much. Eating healthy food is increasingly difficult because of modifications, additives, saturated fat, sugars, artificial flavours and all other kinds of ingredients.
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