Obesity Solutions

This one is great.

Health “experts” in the United Kingdom are advising a new solution to their nation’s increased incidence of overweight and obesity.

This new solution is one of several included in a new report, “Obesity — Can We Turn The Tide?” which was recently published in the British Medical Journal.

Here’s the new solution these academics are advising:

Include a helpline phone number for weight loss advise in all clothes with a waist of more than 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women. They also recommend this warning label be placed in all women’s clothes with a size of 16 or above.

OK, so lets say you are above these size limits and so you find this warning label attached to all your clothing. Now what?

I guess these academics assume the people would call the phone number and get some weight-loss advice. But, what weight-loss advice are they going to get which has been proven to work? Are they going to recommend starting on one of the popular book-based diets or commercial weight-loss programs that have a 95% failure rate? Or — do they have some other advice in mind?

Is this crazy stuff or what?

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

In 2002, Steve Ballmer — the president of Microsoft — lost 50 pounds. His success prompted the company to offer a weight management benefit to all employees.

Here is what’s included:

* Year’s worth of sessions with a personal trainer

* Behavioral and nutritional counseling

* Support groups

* Medical supervision

The total cost of the program is $6,000 which the employee contributes just 20%.

The result? 61,100 pounds have vanished from 2,152 Microsofties.

So, what do you think? Is this a program which will likely be rolled out to all employees in the United States?

I don’t think so. Microsoft’s experience is like the articles about celebrities losing weight. We read about them losing 50 pounds or whatever but, what we don’t learn, is that they get to work with a personal trainer several hours a day and have a personal chef preparing all the food they eat.

It would be nice — but that’s just not the reality for most Americans.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

Health ministers from 53 European countries have approved a charter pledging the nations’ commitment to fight obesity on the continent.

The charter is the first ever agreement among nations having to do with obesity, and it focuses on concrete goals like making healthy foods more available and improving roads so more people can bike and walk.

The charter also expects food companies to “self-regulate” in their marketing of fatty and sugar foods to children.

OK, I applaud the effort — but the goals are down right silly.

I’ve said this before but where is there any evidence that this charter’s recommendations are going to have any effect on the “obesity epidemic.”

Here we have 53 countries all agreeing to take action (and probably committing significant resources to the effort) with no data that anything they are doing will make any difference. In fact, if they were to dig into the research like I have, they’d discover their actions are likely to cause more harm than good.

Obesity isn’t caused by the lack of availability of healthy foods, poor roads, or food advertising — so why did they come up with the goals they did?

Pure craziness.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

A new book published by the University of Toronto Press promotes the idea of taxing junk food.

This book, “The Health Impact of Smoking and Obesity and What To Do About It,” suggests that the lessons learned from tobacco can be applied to obesity.

One of these lessons is that economic levers can have an impact. Research has shown that taxing tobacco decreased its use. Therefore, the book states — “One option, then, is to use special taxation on unhealthy, energy-dense foods and/or subsidies for healthy food.”

This idea has a number of very serious problems:

1. As the authors point out, “one of the obvious differences between tobacco and obesity is that people still need to eat.”

Yep, that’s a major problem. With tobacco, the goal is to stop smoking all together. With eating, the goal is for people to eat the correct types and amounts of food for their unique physiology. These goals are so different I would doubt a strategy that worked for one would work for the other.

2. There’s absolutely no evidence that eating “unhealthy” food leads to weight gain. Almost everyone assumes this is true but there’s no data which supports this assumption.

In fact, given the way the body works, there is no reason to even imagine this assumption is true. What matters is HOW MUCH food is eaten — not WHAT TYPE of food. The body doesn’t care if it is being fed refined white bread or whole wheat bread. If the number of calories is the same, that’s how much energy the body has to deal with — either burning it for energy or storing it away as fat.

Therefore, banning “unhealthy” food to address the “obesity epidemic” makes no sense.

3. Who is going to decide what foods are “healthy” and what foods are “unhealthy?” Again, everyone assumes that high fat foods are unhealthy — but then data comes out indicating that pregnant women who don’t eat enough fat have problems and that kids who don’t eat enough fat have nutrient deficiencies.

The truth is that no one knows enough about all the intricacies of nutrition to accurately decide what’s good and bad for each one of us — given that we are all unique in the way our body’s work.

4. Actually, I could go on and on about the problems with the idea of taxing junk food but I’m going to stop here.

I’ll come back to this topic in a later blog.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness

Since 2004 Virginia has been working on the CHAMPION program — Commonwealth’s Healthy Approach and Mobilization Plan for Inactivity, Obesity, and Nutrition.

Well, last week they released their 300+ page preliminary report based on input from 900 people on behalf of 250 organizations. The results were in the form of a ranking of 4,500 factors that may cause obesity, and a separate ranking of possible solutions.

Here are some of the high-ranking solutions that were identified:
* Provide food label and grocery shopping education
* Educate on ways to cook meals in a short amount of time
* Increase safety of the outdoor environment
* Conduct media/public service announcement campaigns about increasing level of activity
* Offer community based after-school activities
* Provide nutrition education and counseling

So, what do you think? Will these solutions solve our obesity problem?

Personally, I don’t think so.

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness