Nearly 50% of the people in Europe are overweight...

At the 15th European Congress on Obesity held in Budapest recently, experts noted that the numbers of overweight men and women in Europe are increasing, and that of special concern is the fact that the numbers of obese children is also increasing.  Speakers at the conference spoke about the obesity problem as an epidemic and released figures showing that overall nearly 50% of the people in Europe are overweight and that a growing proportion are also obese.

One of the speakers a certain Professor Fried also spoke about the fact that it is estimated that 11 million European people are super obese having a body mass index figure of 40 or even more, and that many of these people are turning to weight loss surgery as a solution to their problem. He said that the rates of successful surgery were high and helped people deal with the associated problems such as diabetes and heart disease that obesity caused.

The obesity conference also discussed a trial research program that was done by the University College London in the UK which produced good results in lowering the weight of overweight and obese children. The program involved a community based weight loss initiative that focused on education and doing things together in order to shed the pounds. The program which went on for just over two months and involved the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children saw the children losing weight, becoming more confident and generally having a better quality of life, and more importantly these results were still evident a year later.

According to Professor Alan Lucas from UCL, obesity is costing the United Kingdom around seven billion pounds each and every year and the success of these community based initiatives should be looked at by the UK government as an affective way to beat obesity over the country. At Ukmedix News we are great believers in education as being the key to long term weight loss and we know that many people are overweight because they simply do not know what is good for them.