Obesity Around the World

Obesity is a global epidemic, as I’ve stated in prior articles in this series on obesity. Although the U.S. is the world’s leader in percentage of obese people, it is far from the only country in the world with a glaring problem.

And as I’ve pointed out, the main culprit in the obesity epidemic is the modern diet, and in particular white flour, refined white sugar, and high fructose corn syrup, along with the consumption of soft drinks and fast food.

I’ve also pointed out that chemicals in foods can cause obesity.

One other food product that can be directly related to obesity is the growth hormones that are fed to animals - the meat that is then eaten by people. Eating animals that have been artificially bulked up can cause the consumers of these foods to also become bulked up.

In the U.S., the number of obese and overweight children has climbed to 30 percent in 30 states, a troubling trend that could signal decades of weight-related health problems such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease as these children become adults.

The U.S. Centers For Disease Control says that one in three American children born in the year 2000 will go on to develop diabetes.

But the same is seen all around the world. A woman I know who has been visiting Scotland since the 1970’s said when she first stayed in Scotland, there were no obese people she ever saw. Now she says she sees it everywhere when she goes.

And the cause, in her mind, is the proliferation of fast food establishments there.

The physiological cause for this is a syndrome that creates accelerated aging and disease. Its name is Metabolic Syndrome and the amount of people it is affecting is reaching epidemic proportions.

Metabolic syndrome is a complex health condition that affects an estimated 25 percent of Americans, and most probably a similar amount around the world.

It begins with an inability to manage blood sugar, which creates a state of glucose intolerance or insulin resistance. Insulin Resistance creates a multitude of conditions, high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, high blood insulin levels, and obesity. When left unchecked, these conditions are risk factors for coronary heart disease, diabetes and accelerated aging.

According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the chances of developing metabolic syndrome increase if you have three or more of the following symptoms:

* A family history of type 2 diabetes and/or metabolic syndrome
* Waist measurements greater than 40 inches for men and greater than 35 inches for women
* Levels of triglycerides of 150 mg/dL or greater
* Low levels of HDL-cholesterol (less than 40 mg/dL in men and less than 50 mg/dL in women)
* Blood pressure above 135/80
* Fasting blood sugar levels above 110 mg/dL (mg of glucose in 1 deciliter of blood)

The U.S. continues to lead the way, with as many as 37% of its children and adolescents carrying around too much fat. But other countries are rapidly catching up.

According to statistics, more than 20% of European youngsters between the ages of 5 and 17 are either overweight or obese. Children in North Africa and the Middle East aren’t far behind.

Across Asia too, childhood obesity is on the rise, and the trend has been documented even in urbanized areas of sub-Saharan Africa, which until recently was the one place in the world where obesity rates were low.

Among the most obese people on the planet are the inhabitants of the South Pacific island of Nauru, who — thanks to a surfeit of cheap, calorie-dense foods, along with a shift away from jobs requiring physical activity — have the unwelcome distinction of being some of the fattest, most diabetes-prone people on the planet.

Unfortunately, the Nauruan experience, while extreme, is not unique. Asia may lag behind the U.S. and Europe in its obesity statistics, but Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and the Philippines have all reported troubling increases in recent years.

In China, where a one-child-per-family policy has created millions of spoiled and overnourished children (feeding a phenomenon known as little-emperor syndrome), the rise in childhood obesity is particularly alarming. Up to 10% of China’s 290 million children are believed to be overweight or obese, and that percentage is expected to have doubled a decade from now.

Imagine this. What does this bode for the future? A world of people living a High Density Lifestyle, who are extremely unhealthy and putting a strain on medical services and medical budgets.

Obesity Can Be Caused By Chemicals in Foods

In Tuesday’s article I discussed some of the dietary reasons for the increased rate of obesity in most countries around the world, and especially in the U.S.

I said how some of the main culprits are sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and an increased reliance of fast foods.

And in yesterday’s article, I showed you how Kellogg’s is trying to fool the public into thinking that a breakfast cereal that is laden with sugar and junk is a food that can boost your immune system.

No wonder obesity is, according to the World Health Organization, a global epidemic! With friends like these, who needs enemies!

But there’s another category of foods that can lead to weight gain and obesity – the chemicals in your food, even if those chemicals don`t contain a single calorie.

To understand this, you’ll need to realize that the liver is your primary detoxification organ. Your liver is also your primary fat-burning organ. Therefore, the more unnatural chemicals you consume on a regular basis, the more time and energy your liver needs to spend detoxifying you. But, the more your liver is consumed with the role of detoxification, the less time and energy it will have for burning fat.

For instance, it’s safe to say that pesticides are poisons: their primary purpose is to kill living organisms, and most non-organic foods are laden with pesticides.

Now, these pesticides don’t transform into non-toxic, safe entities once inside the body.  As the pesticides enter the body, the body’s defense mechanisms send signals that poisons have entered.

How does your body deal with a poison?  By attempting to neutralize it. This means your body attempts to render the poison harmless, and then remove it , generally through normal elimination channels, such as through your colon. Your colon is the primary organ used to eliminate toxins from the body, and the liver is the organ most often responsible for rendering poisons harmless.

But what happens when people eat unnatural chemicals on a regular basis?

Then the liver becomes overwhelmed with the need to detoxify all of those chemicals and poisons, and the poisons start backing up into the blood.

Your liver is also the great warehouse of the body, and so it also stores toxins and poisons that it was unable to neutralize. It does this to keep those poisons out of your bloodstream and from circulating in your body.

This can be taxing on the liver – it can be overwhelming trying to detoxify all of the chemicals being consumed on a daily basis; in addition it is trying to store all the poisons that it wasn’t able to neutralize.

Some estimates are that three fourths of the average person’s liver is used to store toxins that the liver was unable to render harmless.

No wonder that for so many people losing weight is virtually impossible: Their primary fat burning organ is overwhelmed with another task, and it’s become only half functional.

Not only will this lead to weight gain and an inability to lose weight, it can also lead to diabetes, because the liver plays a vital role in the uptake of blood glucose, and if the liver is not fully functioning, its ability to do the work it needs to do with blood glucose can be severely impaired.

And guess what? Like obesity, diabetes has reached epidemic proportions.

So what to do about it? A couple of things.

The first is to try and stop consuming chemicals in your diet on a regular basis. This generally means giving up processed foods as best as possible, and eating organic foods as much as possible. Plant-based foods, particularly vegetables, are very liver friendly.

This will prevent many new chemicals from entering your body, and is a tremendous step in the right direction. But what about those poisons already stored in your liver and circulating in your blood?  Sometimes it takes more than changing your diet to clear out the accrued chemicals residing in the liver.

That is why over the years there have been a number of natural/herbal approaches that have been developed to cleanse the liver.

Milk thistle, vitamin C, selenium, beta carotene, vitamin E, and N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) are all powerful antioxidants which are helpful in liver detoxification.

The amino acid SAM-E plays an important role in liver health, in addition to helping with depression. Cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and cabbage in the diet have been shown to enhance liver detoxification. Besides using them as foods, you can also juice with them.

The B vitamins, including riboflavin and niacin, also are helpful in liver detoxification.

Coffee enemas, used in Gerson Cancer Therapy, is also something that can detox the liver.

Can a Breakfast Cereal Make You Obese and Boost Your Immune System At the Same Time?

It’s long been known that most of the breakfast cereals out there can cause obesity. They’re high in sugar, and as I pointed out in yesterday’s article, sugar is a cause of obesity.

They’re also highly processed foods, which is another cause of obesity.

And thanks to the fact that a lot of breakfast cereals are marketed to children, there is an alarming rise in childhood obesity.

Most cereals marketed to children are high in sugar, high in sodium, and low in fiber. Many are highly colorful because of artificial dyes, making healthier cereals, very literally, pale in comparison.

Reinforcing the myth that children will not eat low-sugar cereals,
the cereal industry has funded a number of studies that find that highly-sweetened cereal is good for children, especially when compared to having no breakfast at all.

But now, Kellogg, the world’s largest cereal maker, is claiming that their breakfast cereal Cocoa Krispies, which is their chocolate flavored version of Rice Krispies, can boost the immune system of children and help them stave off illness.

Boxes of Cocoa Krispies carry a banner proclaiming “Now helps support your child’s IMMUNITY.” Parents are led to believe that eating a bowl of the sugary cereal at breakfast will help bolster their child’s ability to fight off infection from a variety of diseases.

Here are the ingredients of this “immune boosting” food:

RICE, SUGAR, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI, SEMISWEET CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE, ANHYDROUS DEXTROSE), PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (ONE OR MORE OF: COCONUT, SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED), SALT, MALT FLAVORING, CALCIUM CARBONATE, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, ASCORBIC ACID AND SODIUM ASCORBATE (VITAMIN C), IRON, ALPHA TOCOPHEROL ACETATE (VITAMIN E), NIACINAMIDE, ZINC OXIDE, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), FOLIC ACID, BHT (PRESERVATIVE), VITAMIN D, VITAMIN B12.

Sounds real yummy and healthful, doesn’t it?

Fortunately, the public isn’t buying into Kellogg’s claims. San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera wrote Kellogg CEO David Mackay last week, asking him to provide proof in 30 days that his cereal boosts immune systems. Kellogg is misleading consumers to make them think that Cocoa Krispies are a healthy food, Herrera says.

He also says parents may think the cereal is effective warding off swine flu at a time when public health officials encourage children to get vaccinated.

“Immunity claims may also mislead parents into believing that serving this sugary cereal will actually boost their child’s immunity, leaving parents less likely to take more productive steps to protect their children’s health,” Herrera wrote in his letter, which also was sent to the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Justice Department.

Susanne Norwitz, a Kellogg spokeswoman, defended the claim and said that the company added antioxidant vitamins A, C and E to its Cocoa and Rice Krispies products after studies showed the vitamins play a key role in the immune system.

Kellogg’s health claim “belongs in the hall of fame,” said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “By their logic, you can spray vitamins on a pile of leaves and it will boost immunity.”

Brownell says adding vitamins doesn’t make the food an immunity booster. “What really matters is what those things come packaged with – in the case of a cereal like Cocoa Krispies – which is more than 38 percent sugar, it’s not being delivered in a very good vehicle,” Brownell says.

The bottom line is that a poor nutritional food like Cocoa Krispies – if you can call it a food – will weaken your immune system, not boost it.

And it can also lead to obesity, which pretty much is the same thing as saying that it will weaken your immune system.

And it will lead you straight down the path of a High Density Lifestyle.

Obesity – The Health Issue of Our Times

For the next few weeks, I am going to cover the topic of obesity. Obesity is truly the health issue of our times.

When you live a Low Density Lifestyle, one of the beneficial side effects is better health and wellness. And when you live a High Density Lifestyle, one of the detrimental side effects is poor health – and one manifestation of poor health is often times obesity.

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems.

Body mass index (BMI), a measurement which compares weight and height, defines a person as overweight (pre-obese) when their BMI is between 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2, and obese when it is greater than 30 kg/m2.

Obesity increases the likelihood of various diseases, particularly heart disease, type 2 diabetes, breathing difficulties during sleep, certain types of cancer, gynecological issues, pain, and osteoarthritis. Obesity will also shorten life span.

Before the 20th century, obesity was rare; in 1997 the World Health Organization (WHO) formally recognized obesity as a global epidemic. As of 2005 the WHO estimates that at least 400 million adults are obese, with higher rates among women than men.

The rate of obesity also increases with age at least up to 50 or 60 years old and severe obesity in the United States, the British Isles, Australia, and Canada is increasing faster than the overall rate of obesity. The U.S., by the way, has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.

And Scotland actually is the second most obese country in the world, which is why People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) put up an outrageous billboard not too long ago in Scotland.

Once considered a problem only of high-income countries, obesity rates are rising worldwide and affecting both the developed and developing world. These increases have been felt most dramatically in urban settings. The only remaining region of the world where obesity is not common is sub-Saharan Africa.

Obesity is a public health and policy problem because of its prevalence, costs, and health effects.

The main cause of obesity is the modern diet, and as such, it is an easily preventable situation.

From 1971 to 2000, obesity rates in the United States increased from 14.5% to 30.9%. In that same amount of time, calorie consumption has grown tremendously, and most of the extra calories came from an increase in carbohydrate consumption rather than fat consumption.

The primary source of these extra carbohydrates are sweetened beverages, which now account for almost 25 percent of daily calories in young adults in America. Consumption of sweetened drinks, and sweets in general, is believed to be one of the main contributors to the rising rates of obesity.

A few months ago I wrote an article about sugar and high fructose corn syrup, and in the article I said that these were the main culprits in the obesity epidemic. Both of them are hard for the body to process, and use over time can cause tissue damage in various regions of the body.

It may be a lesser of two evils approach to say which of these two are worse, but the evidence points to high fructose corn syrup as being even more of a detriment to the body than sugar. But that doesn’t let sugar off, as sugar is a close second in its effects on the body and how it contributes to obesity.

Another big contributor is the increasing reliance on big-portion, fast-food meals, and the association between fast-food consumption and obesity is well-known. In the United States consumption of fast-food meals tripled and calorie intake from these meals quadrupled between 1977 and 1995.

Interestingly, the country of Iceland has been in such dire straits financially that McDonald’s recently announced that they are closing their stores in that country, making it one of the few countries in the world that they won’t be in. It will be interesting to see if health statistics and obesity rates will lower because of this.

One thing about Iceland is known: they are a resilient and happy people, even with their financial problems, so without a McDonald’s in the land, they may now have cause to be even happier and truly rejoice.

And it may help their financial situation, because it will lower their health care costs.

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