Let’s not wait for obesity problem to grow

We have excelled once again. A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed, yet again, that the Maltese are among the most obese and overweight worldwide. A staggering 73 per cent of Maltese males aged 15 and over were considered to be overweight last year, and 28 per cent were obese. An incredible 68 per cent of all Maltese females over 15 are considered to be overweight and more than a third were considered obese.

A global review of 192 countries ranked Maltese men in the 16th position when it comes to being overweight, outdone only by Greek men in Europe, while women rank 32nd, and are the fattest in all of Europe. Interestingly, the most overweight races are the populations of the Republic of Nauru, followed by the Cook Islands and it seems that living on an island predisposes one, somehow, to overweight and obesity, although there is no scientific explanation for this.

The situation is an alarming one worldwide, in that WHO states that obesity has more than doubled since 1980. It is crucial for individuals to realise that overweight and obesity are considered to be chronic diseases and that they constitute the fifth leading risk for global deaths. WHO calculates that at least 2.8 million adults die annually as a result of being overweight or obese.

Educational campaigns run locally that attempt to raise awareness with regard to healthy diets and the importance of exercise seem to have had little impact, perhaps due to being too little and too late.

It is crucial to intervene at an early age, as obese children become obese adults, and if one parent is obese, the risk of their offspring being obese is about 33 per cent. If both parents are obese, this risk rises to about 66 per cent. Clearly, childhood prevention is crucial and much more needs to be done in this field.

For example, the health and education authorities’ efforts to apply the principles of diet and exercise are undermined by shops and hawkers that sell unhealthy food near school gates, as revealed by an Auditor General report on students’ nutrition. This is lunacy and should obviously be somehow banned, perhaps by imposing a specific radius of several tens of metres from school gates within which junk food cannot be sold.

Unbelievably, some schools have no access to potable water so that students have to bring their own drinks from home – often not water. It appears that, while the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools is pumping money into building new schools, in a country with a falling birth rate, financial constraints prohibit some schools from installing dispenser points or water fountains!

The same report indicated that while several schools have developed internal health-related policies, the onus for implementing them depends on the individual initiative and prioritisation of the school. Trying to raise children to become healthy adults should be part of the curriculum: mens sana in corpore sano.

Quite rightly, the report also pointed to the urgent need to set up a policy to regulate the school nutritional environment, possibly through a coordination unit that would ensure conformity between schools, perhaps even monitoring tuck shops to ensure that the ban on junk foods that was promulgated in January 2008 is actually implemented.

Parents also need to be educated as to what a healthy packed lunch should consist of. Does there really have to be a report to get initiatives like this off the ground? Is it not common sense? What are the authorities waiting for?