Not a single country in the WHO European Region is on track to stop the rise in obesity by 2025 – that’s according to the 2022 European Obesity Report. What’s more, the report highlights serious risks to people’s health – including a stark warning obesity might overtake smoking as the main risk for preventable cancer. In this episode we dig more into the report and find out what countries can do to reverse this trend.
Show notes:
Not a single country in the WHO European Region is on track to stop the rise in obesity by 2025 – that’s according to the 2022 European Obesity Report. What’s more, the report highlights serious risks to people’s health – including a stark warning obesity might overtake smoking as the main risk for preventable cancer. In this episode we dig more into the report and find out what countries can do to reverse this trend.
Show notes:
Hello, and welcome to the health and Europe podcast. I'm your host, Greg Bian. We've launched this podcast to bring you to latest on w HHAs work in the European region. Our region is brought diverse for MidAtlantic and stretching. As far as the Chinese border, we work with fascinating and driven individuals and groups. This podcast is about hearing their stories and how they might impact your day to day life. This week, w H O Europe released a regional obesity report for 2022. The reports draw some stark conclusions pointing out that overweight and obesity in the region have reached epidemic proportions with none of the 53 member states of the region set to meet the target of reducing obesity by 2025. In this episode, spoke with Alexandra Olsen, a communication specialist at w O Europe who explained more about the threat of wage and obesity here posted to our health. I started by asking Alexandra what's in this year's report.
Speaker 2:It includes, uh, a compilation of the most recent and relevant, uh, data and statistics on the situation with obesity and overweight in the countries of the region. It also discusses the problem of obesity across the whole life course and the role of different environments that influence people having to live with overweight and obesity. And this includes the digital environment, for example, as well, the report also discusses, uh, obesity and disease. Um, as you probably know, obesity is a risk factor for many other diseases, noncommunicable diseases. And this includes the link between obesity and cancer, as well as, uh, the impact of, uh, the COVID pandemic on the situation with obesity. And finally the report, uh, suggests some policy options for countries, uh, and, uh, some population level solutions, uh, that countries can consider to, uh, to tackle, uh, obesity.
Speaker 1:So in terms of, uh, yeah, what, what, what the report kind of covers is a, an overview of a situation in the region. Is there anything we can, we can delve into there at all?
Speaker 2:Yes, there is. And unfortunately obesity is a growing challenge in the region. Um, in fact, uh, unfortunately we can say that, uh, we can see from the report that, uh, overweight and obesity has consistently increased, uh, in, uh, the region and not a single country in, uh, the region is on track to reach the target, uh, of, uh, stopping the rise, at least in obesity and, uh, overweight by 2025. So that's a pretty sad, uh, statistic in terms of, uh, data and, uh, estimates. It is suggested that overweight and obesity causes more than 1.2 million deaths across the region every year. And we can see that obesity and overweight effect almost 60% of the adult population and alarmingly nearly one in three school aged children, for example, as well as one in four adolescents. Uh, so the problem of, of childhood obesity is, uh, is definitely something that the report focuses on.
Speaker 1:So there's already some quite surprising findings that, that you've mentioned. I mean, are there any more findings that are particularly surprising from, from this report?
Speaker 2:I think something that is, uh, quite surprising, or at least not obvious to many is, uh, the link between obesity and cancer. So obesity is actually considered a cause for at least 13 different types of cancer. And this includes breast cancer, colorec kidney liver cancer, just to name a few and across the w O European region, obesity is likely to be directly responsible for at least 200,000 new cases of cancer every year. And this figure is projected only to rise in the coming decades. In fact, an estimate from the report suggests that for some countries within the region, it's predicted that obesity will overtake smoking as the main risk factor for preventable cancer in the coming decades. And so that's why the report stresses the importance of public health policies aimed at reducing obesity, because they will also likely have an important impact on the cancer burden.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. I mean, yeah, I mean, you would perhaps usually associate obesity with other health issues such as heart disease, maybe not so much cancer. So that's, that's really, yeah. Quite, quite worrying in lots of ways, but, um, another thing that's, that's obviously had an impact is, has been the pandemic. Is there anything, uh, that we can see coming out the COVID 19 pandemic that the report focuses on
Speaker 2:It's, uh, early to, to say much based on, uh, on the data that we have, but what we can say is, uh, during the pandemic, uh, during COVID 19 people living with overweight and obesity, uh, have been disproportionately affected by the consequences of this pandemic, uh, there have been also some unfavorable shifts in, uh, the food that we eat and our physical activity pattern during the pandemic that we expect will have effects on, on population health. Uh, the report explores some of this recent data on the links between obesity and COVID 19. And we can see from early studies from some countries, uh, some of the European countries that indicate that there has been a rise in overweight and obesity surveillance, uh, as well as just body mass index, uh, in children and adolescents, uh, during the pandemic. And this obviously highlights the importance of the building back better in both prevention and control of, uh, obesity, um, after COVID 19, during COVID 19 people living with obesity, uh, were more likely to experience severe outcomes of COVID 19 as well, uh, including intensive our unit admissions, uh, and death, uh, deaths.
Speaker 1:Thanks. And I mean, kind of turning away perhaps from some of the, the statistics of the report, but, uh, is there anything we can, we can say that, uh, or w O Europe rather can say to, to policy makers about, you know, what kind of advice can we offer them to, to deal with some of these issues?
Speaker 2:One thing that we can say for sure is that abuse C is a very complex, uh, problem, and it includes many different determinants, uh, including, uh, social determinants, as well as health, uh, consequences, which means that there are no, there is no one size fits all approach, and there's no single intervention or solution that I can stop this rise in, uh, in obesity, in, in countries. So in order to, to be successful, any policy has to, uh, take a lot of, uh, commitment and strong political leadership supportive, uh, government administrations and these policies. They must also be co of, uh, one thing that, uh, has a strong focus in the report is the life course approach. So looking at policies, starting from, uh, the preconception stage, actually. So before a child is born looking at the mother's, uh, nutrition and physical activity, and just after the child is born the importance of breastfeeding, for example, uh, to preventing overweight and obesity later in life than looking at childhood. So school food policies, for instance, uh, and all the way up to a senior age where, uh, communities and physical activity, uh, and nutrition, uh, also play a big part, but, uh, different, uh, policies can be, uh, envisioned there. And there are a number of effective interventions, uh, that we call w H O best buys, uh, which means that these are, uh, universal and cost effective of, uh, solutions. And they focus around, uh, two basic determinants, I guess that's, uh, healthy diets and physical activity. And the, the main purpose of, of policies around that is to make healthy diets and, uh, physical, physically active environments, uh, the easy choice and, uh, making them accessible through policy measures. Another thing that is looked at is, uh, of course, uh, health systems and the system response, uh, to overweight and obesity. Uh, so what I talked about before was more prevention, but there are of course also policies and vision that include, uh, management and, uh, control of, uh, overweight and obesity. And, uh, these include a lot of health system approaches, uh, that, uh, policy makers and, uh, government officials can, can look at and implement. And a lot of them are part of these w H O best buys, meaning they are not too costly to implement and yet have, uh, really good
Speaker 1:Effects. Great. And just turning away from the policy makers for a moment, what other actions, uh, does w O Europe kind of recommend to, to tackle obesity,
Speaker 2:Uh, solutions that w H O Europe looks at and that the European office for control and prevention of noncommunicable diseases, um, uh, looks at, uh, look at the factors of unhealthy diets and physical inactivity throughout the whole life, and even before a child is born, uh, sometimes, and this can include many different factors that we can look at and many different focus areas. One interesting thing I think in the report is looking at digital food environments. For example, I think this is the a first time this has been included in, in the report and since, uh, digitalization continues so swiftly both throughout the European region and globally a public health perspective, uh, that considers digital food environment becomes increasingly important. So this includes, for example, digital marketing of unhealthy products aimed at children, for example. So, uh, with the rise in childhood obesity, this, uh, becomes of vital importance that we implement policies that, uh, prevent digital advertising of unhealthy foods, uh, to, um, to children. This also includes, uh, building healthier cities in general and creating environments that, uh, that can, that can bring us closer to, to the healthier choices and away from, from unhealthy food and seditary lifestyles, uh, that lead to inactivity.
Speaker 1:That's super interesting. And I mean, I guess also as well, we've, we've seen this report coming out just this week about, um, uh, marketing of, of, uh, milk formula to, to infants and parents as well. So it's kind of, yes, it's a big ecosystem and there's definitely a lot to be done, I think, uh, in, in those terms.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly. And, uh, an important component of that is also, uh, health literacy. So it's, uh, it's important to, to raise this awareness both about the, as you mentioned here with the baby, uh, food, uh, formulas, raising awareness about the tactics of the industry and about the healthy choices that, uh, uh, that can be made by by parents, uh, instead, and there are in the question of obesity and overweight. There are a lot of, of misconceptions, both among the public and among health professionals, uh, lead to, to weight, stigma, to disparity and access to, to health information. So it's, it's a really important focus as well of, uh, giving accurate information to, to people about the, uh, about the issues.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I think that's a, a good point to, to wrap up on. Thanks, Alexandra.
Speaker 2:Great. Thank you.
Speaker 1:That's all. We have time for special. Thanks to Alexandria for speaking with us. If you'd like to find out more about the reports on BT, you can do so on our website, that zero w H O dot I NT, or check out the links in the show notes, make sure to leave as a rating. And if you like what you've heard, recommend us to a friend or a colleague, thanks for listening. And to a next time safe and stay.