by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: February 20, 2009

Society has always contained a mixture of thin and fat people. The trouble is that today the balance is tipped in favour of the overweight and obese rather than the slim and healthy. Obviously weight control is down to the individual if they choose to binge on fast food and calorific snacks whilst engaging in little physical activity, surely it is up them isn't it? This ought to be the case but the fact that obesity is hitting individuals collectively suggests that something has gone awry. There is great concern about the impact that obesity is having because of how it has spread so rapidly, and the implications this has for people's health and thus for society at large.

Obesity can cause premature death, as a person with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 30 is more likely to develop high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer, as well as conditions such as osteoarthritis, gout and bladder control problems. These conditions hardly act as an incentive to become obese or to stay that way, and yet the number of people getting larger has increased substantially over the years. There must be more factors at work than people simply eating too much and exercising too little. Obesity has seeped into the collective consciousness so that it seems to have become a part of Western culture. This is not just a cultural problem, though, as physiology, genetics and psychology all contribute to the likelihood of becoming obese.

Hence, children born to obese parents are likely to become obese themselves, and once that happens there is a good chance they will enter into adulthood obese. If obese parents cannot control their own eating habits and have a distorted idea of what a healthy diet is, there is a good chance that they are going to unwittingly inflict these beliefs on their children. This is perhaps why Western governments are trying so hard to intervene in an area which should be about personal freedom and individual choice. If adults want to eat unhealthy food and to sit around all day it is their own choice, but children have little say in the matter, and it is obviously important to instil them with good eating habits if they are going to enter into adulthood at a healthy weight.

It is easier to transform young people's perception of a healthy lifestyle than it is to tackle an adult's long-established ideas, and so it makes sense to try to get parents and educational institutions to help children make the right decisions when it comes to eating and exercise. Often obese individuals not only suffer from physical illness, but also have psychological issues such as low self-esteem and depression, and tend to have an unhealthy reliance on food. Hopefully by tackling child obesity it will be easier to prevent such issues developing.

Obesity is not an individual problem, as its impact can be felt throughout society as more and more people succumb to its associated illnesses. Although it is ultimately down to the individual to seek change, they should have a supportive environment in which to make changes, rather than be stigmatised and castigated for something over which they often feel they have little control.

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