Obesity in the United Kingdom

Causes

Causes cited for the growing rates of obesity in the United Kingdom are multiple and the degree of influence of any one factor is often a source of debate. At an individual level, a combination of excessive food energy intake and a lack of physical activity is thought to explain most cases of obesity. Reduced levels of physical activity due to increased use of private cars, desk bound employment, a decline in home cooking skills and the ready availability of processed foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fats, are variously cited as contributing factors.

Patterns of food consumption outside the home

Media attention given to celebrity British chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Marco Pierre White and many others with television shows and books encouraging home produced meals may have had a limited short term impact on the growth of fast food chains such as McDonald's and Burger King. Other fast food outlets, high street bakeries, and chain coffee shops offering hot drinks with sugar levels over three times the daily recommended limit have nonetheless continued to rapidly expand. A 2015 University of Cambridge study reported that the total number of takeaway restaurants including fried chicken, fish and chips, pizza, kebab, Indian and Chinese takeaway shops has risen by 45% over the preceding 18 years. Government data reports that expenditure on takeaway food in the United Kingdom rose by 7.0% between 2011 and 2014.

Professor Jimmy Bell, an obesity specialist at Imperial College London, has stated that contrary to popular belief, the people of the United Kingdom have not become greedier or less active in recent years. One thing that has changed is the food that they eat, and, more specifically, the sheer amount of sugar they ingest. "We're being bombarded every day by the food industry to consume more and more food. It's a war between our bodies and the demands our body makes, and the accessibility that modern society gives us with food."

Effects

Being overweight or obese increases the risk of illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, as well as some forms of cancer. In the United Kingdom, obesity and a BMI of 30 to 35 has been found to reduce life expectancy by an average of three years, while a BMI of over 40 reduced longevity by eight to 10 years.

According to a report published by the Commons Health Select Committee in November 2015, treating obesity related medical conditions costs the National Health Service (NHS) £5 billion a year and has a wider cost to the economy of £27 billion. A study published by two McKinsey researchers in the same year estimated costs to the United Kingdom economy of £6 billion ($9.6 billion) annually in direct medical costs of conditions related to being overweight or obese and a further £10 billion in costs on diabetes treatment. The cost of obesity and diabetes treatment in the NHS is equivalent to the United Kingdom’s combined budget for the police and fire services, law courts, and prisons; 40 percent of total spending on education; and about 35 percent of the country’s defense budget.

British sperm quality has been negatively affected by obesity.

Obese people often have to be moved by firefighters, as they are beyond the capacity of the ambulance service. From January 2013 to May 2015, 5,565 firefighters attended 1,866 "bariatric rescues" in the UK. Each call costs around £400.

The National Health Service has only a limited capacity for scanning obese people, meaning that obese patients often have to be sent to distant hospitals to be scanned.

Tackling obesity

Various groups including government, food and health care professionals have made attempts to highlight and address the causes and growing problem of obesity in the United Kingdom.

School meals

In 2005, British chef Jamie Oliver began a campaign to reduce unhealthy food choices in British schools and to get children more enthused about eating lower calorie nutritious food instead. Oliver's efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series Jamie's School Dinners, challenged the junk-food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating. The British Government and Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to take steps to improve school dinners shortly after the programme aired. The programme prompted 271,677 people to sign an online petition on the Feed Me Better website, which was delivered to 10 Downing Street on 30 March 2005. As a result, the government added an extra £280 million ($316m USD) to help with the school meals plan. Currently fried foods are only allowed to be served twice a week and soft drinks are no longer available. The Department for Education and Skills created the School Food Trust, a £60 million initiative to provide support and advice to school administrators to improve the standard of school meals.

Recommendations by Medical Professionals

In 2013 220,000 doctors in the United Kingdom united to form what they call a 'prescription' for the UK's obesity epidemic. The report presented an action plan for future campaigning activity, setting out 10 recommendations for healthcare professionals, local and national government, industry and schools which it believes will help tackle the nation’s obesity crisis.

Recommendations included:

Action on Sugar, a registered UK charity and lobby group, was also formed in 2014 by a group of medical specialists concerned about sugar and its impact on health. Research by the group has highlighted the amount of added sugar contained in both processed food as well as drinks sold by national retailers such as Starbucks and Costa Coffee. Despite this, the proposed sugar tax is squarely aimed at high-sugar drinks, particularly fizzy drinks, which are popular among teenagers. Pure fruit juices and milk-based drinks will be excluded and the smallest producers will have an exemption from the scheme.

Government initiatives

In October 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters that his government might consider a Fat tax as part of the solution to the United Kingdom's obesity problem. A Public Health Responsibility Deal was subsequently announced in 2012 with voluntary pledges from the food industry and local business to promote healthy eating and physical activity. The Public Health Responsibility Deal has been hailed by members of the UK's Food and Drink Federation and the Department of Health, but research published in 2015 by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine questioned the effectiveness of the voluntary agreement. Policy based initiatives to improve diet, such as food pricing strategies, restrictions on marketing and the reduction of sugar intake, do not form a part of the pledges agreed by the food industry under the terms of the Public Health Responsibility Deal.

The government made efforts to use the London 2012 Summer Olympics to help tackle obesity and inspire people into a healthy active lifestyle. Health Secretary Alan Johnson set up Olympic themed Roadshows and mass participation events such as city runs. A £30 million grant was also issued to build cycle paths, playgrounds and encourage children to cut out snacks.

As a part of the London 2012 legacy, Prime Minister David Cameron also announced an annual £150 million ($227-USD) boost for school sport. The funding is "ring-fenced", meaning it can only be spent on sports activities such as after school clubs, coaching and dedicated sports programmes. Prompting criticism about mixed messaging, Official Sponsors of the 2012 London Olympics included McDonald's, Coca Cola and Cadbury.

In the 2016 United Kingdom budget, the British Government announced the introduction of a sugar tax on the soft drinks industry. Planned to come into effect in 2018, beverage manufactures will be taxed according to the volume of sugar sweetened beverages they produce or import. The measure will generate an estimated £520 million a year in additional tax revenue to be spent on doubling existing funding for sport in UK primary schools.

Geographical distribution of obesity in the United Kingdom

In contrast with the United States, overweight and obese individuals in the United Kingdom are more likely to be found in urban settings. Statistics highlight that lower income areas of London exhibit higher rates of childhood obesity compared with other parts of the UK. Data published in 2013 by London’s Poverty Profile found disparities in childhood obesity rates between London and the rest of England, with 23% of children in London at the age of 10 to 11 being obese, higher than the English average. According to research data from the Health Survey for England, the proportion of children classified as overweight and obese was inversely related to household income.

Regional overweight and obesity statistics for England

For England alone, Public Health England published data in 2014 indicating that 63.8% of adults in England have a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or over with the fattest region being the North East, where 68% of people are overweight, followed by the West Midlands at 65.7%.

Comparison within the European Union

According to the Global Burden of Disease Study published in 2013, the United Kingdom had proportionately more obese and overweight adults than anywhere in western Europe with the exception of Iceland and Malta. Using data from 1980 to 2013, in the UK 66.6% of men and 52.7% of women were found to be either overweight or obese. The figures for Malta were 74.0% of men and 57.8% of women and for Iceland were 73.6% of men and 60.9% of women respectively.