02 April 2013

Health issues - Obesity


Our task about global issue is the health issues in the world, it´s a big theme and some examples is tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, malaria, polio, damages of radiation for example cancer, emotional problems and obesity. Obesity is what we are going to focus on in the rest of the task.  

Obesity is absolutely a global issue.  Obesity is when someone is so overweight that it is a threat to their health. This is increasing all over the world today, and there are not only people in rich countries that are obese. Obesity also varieties within every country, but is a problem on the entire planet. In 2005, approximately 1,6 billion people over 15 years old were overweight. WHO predict that by 2015, there will be approximately 2,3 billion overweight people. 

Male obesity: 2002, 2005, 2010           Female obesity: 2002, 2005, 2010
Globally, male obesity has increased between 2002 and 2010     Globally, female obesity has increased between 2002 and 2010
These pictures show that obesity is spread all over the world, but you also see which countries are most effected.

The causes of obesity are for example the society and the government. They make the unhealthy food with a lot of salt, sugar and fat, and this is cheaper than healthy food.  There are also more and more people that lose their self-confidence and eat to drown their sorrows. The food and self-confidence "combined with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, increasing urbanization and changing modes of transportation, it is no wonder that obesity has rapidly increased in the last few decades, around the world." quote http://www.globalissues.org/article/558/obesity

Many countries have measures to prevent and help people who suffer of obesity.  There are many organizations and programs designed to help overweight people to lose weight and gain a healthier lives. Some stores in Norway have made fruit and healthy food cheaper, and that will hopefully make it easier for people to buy healthy food, instead of cheap and unhealthy food.  There is  also organizations for overweight people, so they can talk to other overweight people and make them understand that they are not alone. To talk with people who have lost weight and managed to get a healthy life can be a huge motivation for some.  The government, in a lot of countries, makes exercise a part of school, and that can be a huge help to prevent obesity among children. After-school activities is also a good way of preventing obesity among young people, so they can be social and active instead of sitting in front of the computer or TV and eating junk-food.

Obesity is especially common in USA, 30% of all obesity in the world is in America. People in the west part of the world suffer most of obesity, but it is becoming more and more common all over the world. But in the rich parts of the world they can afford to do something about it before people die of overweight, poor countries do not have the money to help them. Women is more affected than men, and science shoes that obesity is something that becomes more normal when one gets older. 

Obesity isn’t very connected to other global issues, but it is connected to poverty, but in some causes just avarice. Healthier products are more expensive, and to not spend that much money, they rather buy cheap products. The cheap products don’t include healthy ingredients, rather a lot of fat and sugar, since that’s easier to get hold of, and therefore cheaper to produce. 
The main problem “health issues” is on the other hand connected to more global issues. Poverty leads to people not being able to pay their water and electric bills, and the health decreases because of worse hygiene. Increasing population and urbanization lead to more diseases because of people living closer. This creates a larger and easier spread of different diseases and problems. Pollution makes the air unclean, and terrorism and wars help in the increasing of pollution because of vehicles and weapons. Wars make people’s health worse, mostly because of this, but also because of the conditions this leads to.  



Sources:

Linda, Ragnhild S. og Åsne.


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