Junk Food Super-sizing Europeans
The 'Americanization' of food in Europe is leading to more obesity, this article in Good Housekeeping reports:
[The ages-old Mediterranean diet] is clearly disappearing from plates elsewhere in Italy. Long touted for its health benefits by doctors the world over, the classic regimen of fresh fish, fruits and vegetables, pasta and olive oil is losing out to American-style eating habits. The result: rapidly increasing levels of American-style obesity."American fashions always arrive here 10 years later, and now this fashion is arriving," says Amleto D'Amicis, a leading government nutritionist who helped write the latest report on obesity in Italy. Among the findings: 25% of Italian children are now overweight or obese, making them the heaviest in Europe.
Of children ages 6 through 10, 36% are overweight, the Italian Ministry of Health reported last month.
And it's not just here. Throughout Europe, the scales are bouncing upward. In many countries, more than half of adults are now overweight and up to 30% obese.
In Britain, 21% of men and nearly 24% of women are now considered obese, a threefold increase in 20 years, according to the International Obesity Task Force, a London-based consumer group that collaborates with the World Health Organization. This month, the task force warned that without urgent action, obesity levels in Britain will soar 40% or more within a single generation. A 2001 study showed over 11% of adults in Finland were obese.
This is ugly, why can't Westerners adhere closely to healthier diets. In my continent, fast food resturants are increasing and though I've seen a lot of normal sized men and women, my worry is when I turn 21 and the year is 2012, everyone else is obese and there will also be more anorexics.
ReplyJust go ban hydogenated junk and fast food.