Obesity :wearing down your pocket

Obesity :wearing down your pocket

Not only does obesity affect you heath, it also affects your pocket. In South Africa currently approximately 61% of the population is considered overweight or obese. As a result, more than half of the population not only risk developing chronic health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease (http://www.obesityinamerica.org/understandingObesity/diseases.cfm), but are also potentially placing themselves under severe financial strain due to more frequent medical bills and possible penalties for life insurance or medical aid (http://www.salvagente.co.za/ozone-saunas/obesity-can-cost-you-more-than-your-health/). Obesity also carries a cost in the work place that can result in lost Medicare funds. These costs include both direct and indirect costs, with indirect costs relating to lost wages and productivity lost to illness.

Sometimes one may pay higher life insurance premiums for obesity due to the long term health risks. For the morbidly obese – those with a Body Mass Index (BMI) (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/) greater than 40 - they may even be declined life insurance or other benefits. Unfortunately, sometimes that wake-up call might come too late if arthritis or heart disease has already established itself.”

Reducing obesity can assist current workers in remaining productive, and reduce diseases related to obesity. For those South Africans suffering from obesity the time to act is now before it causes irreversible damage to one’s health and finances

Comprehending food labels effectively: We are what we eat

It has come to my attention that there is still an alarming rate of South Africans who are illiterate; South Africa has a literacy rate that lays 80% (www.expatcapetown.com/southafrica/litracy-rate). In a developing country, this should not be the case. This poses a huge problem, how are people suppose to comprehend food labels effectively if they can’t read, “we are what we eat”? Colour-coded food labels were proposed to the government but it was declined, the government stated that it is confusing, simplistic and sends the wrong message about healthy choices (www.pushforfoodlables ).

The more practice we get reading food labels, the better we can become in using them as a tool to plan a healthy balance diet. The nutrition facts label is a boxed panel required by the food and drug administration on most packaged food and beverages products. The nutrition facts labels provide detailed information about the nutrient content of the product. The label is intended to help us make healthier choices; it also enables us to compare similar products to see which one might be a healthier choice. You can read the nutrient label to determine the amounts of such nutrients as fat, sodium and fibre in specific products.(www.nutrientfacts:aninteractiveguidetoffodlabels)

Raising an obese nation
The impact of food advertising on obese children



brainwashing !



Advertising directed at children is exploitative (http://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx#). Children have a remarkable ability to recall content from the ads to which they have been exposed. Product preference has been shown to occur with as little as a single commercial exposure and to strengthen with repeated exposures. Product preferences affect children's product purchase requests and these requests influence parents' purchasing decisions. Up to 5% of boys and a staggering 25% of girls in South Africa are obese or overweight. (http://www.selfmed.co.za/full_story.aspx?nid=13534) 



choices?



Social marketing

Social marketing has been used in the context of community-based obesity prevention programs to promote behaviors such as increased parent–child communication and improved family health. South Africa needs to opt for such marketing as media plays a huge role in our ever so developing country.  Parents serve as important nutrition and physical activity role models. Their behavior fosters child emulation of eating, exercise, and leisure habits, such as media use. Parental modeling can serve as either a risk or protective factor for childhood obesity. To foster beneficial modeling, social marketing can encourage parents to adopt protective behaviors by depicting positive parental role models creating a healthy home environment. Parents who model healthy rather than unhealthy behaviors, such as keeping fruits and vegetables foods in the household instead of junk foods, can lay the foundation for their children to incorporate healthy habits at home and in school and community environments. (http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v18/n1s/fig_tab/oby2009428f1.html#figure-title)



South Africans slowly eating themselves to death

Obese South Africa

Obesity is commonly described as the imbalance between energy intake and expenditure such that excess energy is stored in fat cells, which enlarge or increase in number. Excess body fat frequently results in a significant diminishing of health. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/ 

According to the World Health Organization  obesity has become a global epidemic with an estimated 1.3 billion people who are overweight or obese. The dominance of obesity in South Africa is astonishingly high, 29% of South African men and 56% of South African women are overweight or obese. This is higher than that reported in other African countries. Our rainbow nation is rapidly "eating itself slowly to death".

An ethnic comparison of eating attitudes and associated body image concerns in adolescent South African schoolgirl’s survey http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ shows that cultural factors, perceptions and beliefs about body are highly influencing the obesity rate in South Africa. With a country rich in cultural diversity we see that culture influences our weight and shapes our eating .Social gatherings in some cultures encourage overeating, as there is abundance of food. We look at perceptions, in certain instances black women associate thinness with illness and now with HIV/AIDS. Many overweight and obese South African women do not want to lose weight although they may be aware of the health consequences of being overweight. This acceptance of their own obesity may hinder the effectiveness of weight-control programs. Again we see that in black society, a black curvy woman is considered more “attractive looking/and healthy” as appose to being thin.



This poses the question “What is our society doing to educate people about obesity and it dreadful out comes? “. Yes, there are outreach programs such as benifts in medical aids that educated people on nutrition and promote healthy life style   http://momentum.cmpl.com, The minister of heath in pretoria Dr. Aaron Motsoalei, has also called on the international community to put pressure on the food industry to reduce harmful foodstuffs and promote healthy eating habits worldwide , other outreach programs include heath 24 eat healthy programme  hhtp://www.heath24.com but is this enough?