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?