Which ‘science’ will British PM follow on obesity? : LC Research/Media Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#1 ^

Mon, Jun-22-20, 03:14

Demi

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Which ‘science’ will British PM follow on obesity?

Which ‘science’ will Boris Johnson follow on obesity?

Tarek S Arab

https://life.spectator.co.uk/articl...low-on-obesity/

Quote:

The Prime Minister recently announced a new “battle of the bulge” after increasing amounts of evidence points to obesity as heightening the risks of complications from Covid-19.

Very soon after, the usual suspects surfaced. Not happy with the current tax on sugar, PETA are calling for an additional tax on fat and on meat. Not to be outdone, the British Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Society waded in, extolling the benefits of surgery.

One group wants to starve us, and the other wants to operate on us. The surgeons at least have high-quality, scientific evidence to support their claims and a soothing bedside manner. I don’t doubt the noble intentions on both sides, but before calling for a diet of coconut water and grass souffle, perhaps we need to look into the underlying science. After all, the rationale for the “sugar tax” was the deleterious effect of ultra-processed foods.

This tax of course does not apply to unprocessed carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables, whose higher intake is associated with a lower risk of death from heart disease.

The same cannot be said of whole grains; they are so “essential to health” apparently that there is no scientific evidence to commend them.

Eggs, poultry, meat and dairy are rich sources of protein, required for healthy bones, muscles, teeth and tissues. Evidence suggests that an egg a day is not associated overall with increased risk of heart disease and given that the cholesterol in eggs has no effect on blood cholesterol levels, it is high time this demonised food was rehabilitated.

More than two servings a week of poultry in a recent paper have been associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. This sounds damning until you realise that the study population were more likely to be smokers, have diabetes, have a higher BMI and consume a lower quality diet, thus suggesting that they already had major risk factors for heart disease than a healthy population. In absolute terms, we are talking about a risk of 2 per cent over 30 years.

What of full-fat dairy? 5 servings of full-fat dairy a week are associated with better cardiovascular health. 2 servings of full-fat dairy have been associated with a 30 per cent decrease in the risk of metabolic syndrome as well as a 12 per cent reduction in diabetes risk. For the cheese lovers out there, indulge; the evidence, like the Force, is with you.

What of red meat, a rich source of protein, iron, vitamin C and other nutrients? The picture is more complex. Older studies have linked higher red meat consumption to the development of stomach and colon cancer, but more recent evidence suggests otherwise. Another large study found a slight increase in overall mortality with higher levels of unprocessed and processed meat but as above, the population studied already had multiple risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. Having said that, no one has explained why, if meat is so harmful, the people of Hong Kong have the highest meat consumption on the planet yet have a life expectancy of 84 years.

The WHO in 2015 classified red and processed meat as direct carcinogens i.e. containing cancer-causing chemicals. A subsequent multi-country systematic review in 2017 suggested that the evidence to support the contention that unprocessed and processed meat was harmful to human health was of extremely low quality. Predictably this led to a scientific backlash, and more confusion on the part of consumers.

None of these studies included the “gold-standard” randomised control trial with long-term follow-up that would be required to provide a definitive answer. They are mostly observational studies that come with their own significant limitations.

We finally come to the former villain turned food superhero, dietary fat. Despite being essential for the production of hormones, cells and tissues in the body, and important for inducing satiety, it has been demonised for 60 years as a scourge on human health, as a result of deliberate data misrepresentation by an ambitious scientist.

Vindication however is at hand; study after study after study indicate that saturated fat in the diet is not associated with stroke, heart attack or all cause mortality. It is the dietary consumption of “trans-fats” that is the concern. The blood levels of saturated fat have been associated with the development of heart disease, however these levels are not raised by a doubling of saturated fat in the diet and indeed it is the higher body synthesis of these fats, driven by excess processed carbohydrates, that is the issue.

Higher carbohydrate levels in the diet actually increase the level of blood triglycerides, a more significant risk factor for heart disease than LDL cholesterol alone.

Scientific evidence, not faith, should be the basis of public health policy and the evidence to support a tax on dairy or meat is lacking. PETA and others should be ignored on this issue.

Corn, wheat and sugar are heavily subsidised by governments the world over. It’s time that these subsidies were either extended to dairy, poultry, meat and produce, or all subsidies abolished. Everyone deserves a genuine choice when it comes to the food they eat, and poverty should not be a reason a person cannot enjoy the highest quality food.

Last edited by Demi : Mon, Jun-22-20 at 03:34.

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#2 ^

Mon, Jul-20-20, 00:59

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
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Boris Johnson could solve Britain’s obesity crisis - but not without restricting sugar consumption

Boris could do for the nation’s waistline what the Victorians did for sanitation but he will have to take on ‘Big Sugar’ to win it

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-...is-not-without/

Quote:

Might Boris Johnson go down in history as the Prime Minister who solved Britain’s greatest health crisis? Could he become Edwin Chadwick of the modern age?

Chadwick outraged the laissez-faire establishment of 1830s England with his “sanitary idea” and proposals for a national sewage network. Across industrialising Britain people were dying like flies of communicable diseases caused by poor sanitation such as dysentery, diphtheria, typhus and cholera. The problem was so acute that, by 1850, the average lifespan was just 38 years for someone who lived in London. In Manchester and Liverpool, you were lucky to survive beyond 30. Young children were the hardest hit.

Yet Chadwick solved the problem. His work and dogged lobbying paved the way for a “great sanitary awakening” in cities across Europe and America. By insisting that the might of the state be used to dig sewer networks for the greater good, countless millions of lives were saved and economies boomed - Britain’s chief among them.

Today Britain faces a health crisis every bit as severe as that seen-off by the Victorians. Obesity and the epidemic of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and diabetes it has sparked are not just blighting millions of lives but placing an unsustainable economic strain on society.

Britain is the “fat man” of Europe. NHS data shows that in England, 67 per cent of men and 60 percent of women are now overweight or obese and, by 2030, 10 per cent of the population will have type-2 diabetes on current trends. Some 20% of year six children are obese, the prevalence over twice as high in the most deprived areas compared to the richest.

The direct costs of treating health complications associated with obesity in the NHS now stands at over £6 billion a year, with wider costs to society of £27 billion annually. Last year, 876,000 hospital admissions were obesity-related, an increase of 23% on 2017/18.

“As well as the serious health consequences, obesity also leads to lower levels of quality of life, increased risk of social stigmatization, depression, low self-esteem and in some children lower levels of educational attainment”, notes Professor Emma Frew of the Institute of Applied Health Research.

To his credit, the Prime Minister is said to be determined to ‘do a Chadwick’ and tackle the crisis head-on. Spurred on by his own mid-life battle with weight and Covid-19, he is reported to have ordered a “comprehensive obesity strategy” to be drafted and implemented in full with some urgency. It is expected to be unveiled later this summer.

Advisers in Downing Street believe that, politically, Britain is ready for radical change. The pandemic, they calculate, has not only highlighted the vulnerability of an overweight population (an obese individual is 44 per cent more likely to be critically ill from Covid-19) but demonstrated the power of public health policy to bring positive societal change.

But ambition is one thing, a workable strategy and its competent implementation something entirely different.

All previous attempts to launch a comprehensive obesity strategy in the UK have fallen flat, derailed in large part by the lobbying of a handful multinational conglomerates responsible for the great bulk of sugary junk foods sold in Britain and around the world.

Politicians always start in the right place - demanding cross-government action on both the supply and demand sides of the equation - but end up with campaigns which place all the emphasis on consumer behaviour. Not surprisingly, they are then derided as “nannying”.

The appalling Change for Life campaign which kicked off in 2009 with an advertisement depicting non-sedentary cavemen living alongside dinosaurs was a classic of the genre.

Chadwick also faced a vociferous economic elite who regarded disease, not as a societal problem, but one of personal frailty. His genius was to show, empirically, that disease had more to do with urban squalor than individual failings.

The same point holds good today. Obesity, like good hygiene, is an environmental problem. Its primary determinants are high calorie intake and low levels of physical activity. Personal choice plays a role but not much of one when the world around us is designed to prompt constant grazing on sugary foods and a sedentary lifestyle.

The early noises from Downing Street are that the Prime Minister intends to tackle the UK’s “obesogenic environment” head-on. Already local authorities nationwide have been ordered to narrow roads and widen pavements in an urgent bid to encourage cycling and walking.

The new strategy is also expected to financially incentivise GP’s and NHS trusts to encourage those most at risk to have bariatric surgery and other proven interventions. This should force the NHS leadership to move beyond simply paying lip service to the issue.

But it “population-level interventions” on the supply side which have the most impact and without which any strategy is certain to fail.

Just as the ban on smoking in public buildings proved a game-changer in tobacco consumption and breathalyser tests, seatbelts and speed limits slashed road traffic deaths, it is legislation which cuts calorie consumption that will be the game changer for obesity.

The empirical evidence for this comes from Public Health England’s sugar reduction initiative - one part of which is voluntary, the other statutory. It aimed to reduce the average sugar content of all UK food products by 20% between 2015 and 2020.

Final results have yet to be published, but by 2018 the statutory Soft Drinks Industry Levy, which imposes a wholesale tax on the most sugary soft drinks, had cut sugar in the drinks it applies to by an impressive 28.8%. In contrast, the voluntary scheme, which covers all other products and relies on the goodwill of the food industry achieved only a 2.9% reduction.

If the Prime Minister is to become a modern-day Chadwick, he will need to follow the evidence. An obesity strategy which does not restrict sugar consumption will be about as much use as a sanitation policy without a sewage network.