Environment

Introduction

• Obesity is a global public health problem that plagues 400 million persons worldwide. The gravity of the dramatic rise in obesity and its consequences on health and quality of life cannot be overemphasized. In the United States, obesity is associated with more preventable deaths than any single factor other than cigarette smoking. Most of this associated mortality is mediate through major chronic diseases related to obesity, such as cardiovascular disease (mainly heart disease and stroke), diabetes, and cancer.
• Food tastes better, is available in more varieties, and is cheaper, especially processed foods. Portion sizes are getting bigger, usually at very little extra cost. For convenience, more people are eating pre-packaged food, fast food and soft drinks, which are often high in calories, fat, salt and sugar. And these types of food are heavily advertised, especially to children.
• We are also living more inactive lifestyles. The use of cars and public transport over walking and cycling is increasing. Many jobs now involve sitting at a desk for several hours. And inactive pastimes, such as watching television and surfing the internet, are becoming more popular. We need to have an environment that encourages healthy eating and physical activity. You can read about our work to help bring about such an environment in our Policy section.
• An interplay of genetics and the environment is central to the regulation of energy balance, and thus body weight. Although the genetic influences on body weight have received considerable attention in recent years, the marked increase in the prevalence of obesity over the past 30 years, a relatively short period of time, is most likely is due to recent environmental changes.
• Thus, a gene-environment interaction is likely in which individuals, particularly those who are genetically susceptible, are at risk for developing obesity in an environment that facilitates high energy intake and low energy expenditure.
• In fact, obesogenic is a term that has been coined to describe a permissive environment that both promotes food intake and discourages physical activity. With an abundance of convenient, palatable, energy-dense foods and increasingly fewer demands for physical activity in usual lifestyles, the contemporary environment enables the energy balance to be tipped in favor of weight gain.

Obesity and genes

• The main reasons for the increase in the prevalence of obesity to do with modern lifestyle : we as a society produce food in large quantities and people have gotten used to eating large portions of food.
• At the same time, people tend not to be as physically active. Entertainment has gone from playing sports in the park to playing video game sports. And urban sprawl has made driving rather than walking or bicycling the standard method for getting around.
• Some evidence suggests a possible genetic link to obesity. Children whose parents are obese are 10 times more likely to be obese as well. Research seems to point to some genetic influence and scientists are now working to determine what genes are involved in weight. Genes have been identified that control how fat is distributed through a persons body.
• It should be emphasised that body weight is ultimately determined by the interaction of genetic, environmental, physiological and psychosocial factors. Furthermore, the specific distribution of energy expenditure requirements and individual substrate partitioning are known to influence the energy balance equation depending on the genetic make-up.

Dietary habits

• The influence of dietary fat on obesity prevalence is controversial. Arguments often presented against an important involvement of dietary fat in obesity onset are based on observational longitudinal and ecological studies, which suggest that shifts in fat/sugar consumption and the frequent use of low caloric food products in some countries have been associated with a paradoxical increase in the prevalence of obesity due to a reverse interaction.
• Furthermore, although low-fat diets may be helpful in decreasing body fatness or preventing weight gain, current scientific evidence seems to indicate that dietary fat reduction should be mainly seen as a means to reduce the dietary energy density.
• Populations consuming very low-fat diets usually do not show high rates of obesity prevalence, while a meta-analysis of intervention studies has revealed that in free-living subjects a plausible weight loss occurs in individuals with reduced fat consumption.

Plan meals

• To help you and your family be healthier, you should plan your meals. When you plan meals, you can make sure you include enough foods from each food group.
• Pay special attention, for exemple, to serving enough vegetables and fruits in family meals. When you are serving a food with a lot of fat or salt, you can plan lowfat or low-salt foods to go with it. For example, ham is high in salt.
• If you have ham for dinner, you also can serve a salad or a vegetable that does not need salt. Try to reach a good balance. Go through your recipe cookbooks and other favorite sources and choose 10-20 recipes that you know you can make and that your family likes.
• Then consider texture, temperature, and color when visualizing your full dinner plate. Color is probably the most important consideration to think about in meal planning. Nutritionists advise making your plate look like a painter's palette.
• The more different colors on your plate, the more varied and healthy your diet will be. Temperature and texture should be varied to add interest and make the meal more pleasing to the palate. Choose some cold foods, some served at room temperature, and some hot. Crisp, crunchy, smooth, chunky, and tender are all textures you should think about.

Save money and time

• If you plan before you go food shopping, you will know what you have on hand and what you need. Also, shopping from a list helps you avoid some expensive impulse purchases. Look for specials in the newspaper ads for the stores where you shop.
• Look for coupons for foods you plan to buy. But remember, coupons save money only if you need the product. Also, check if other brands are on sale, too. They may cost even less than the one with a coupon.
• Compare the cost of convenience foods with the same foods made from scratch. Try store brands. They usually cost less than name brands, but they taste as good and generally have the same nutritional value. Prevent food waste.
• Buy only the amount that your family will eat before the food spoils. Read the Nutrition Facts label on packaged foods. Compare the amount of fat, sodium, calories, and other nutrients in similar products. This can help you choose foods that have less fat, sodium or calories, and more vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
• When you plan meals, you have foods on hand and make fewer trips to the grocery store. Planning also helps you make good use of leftovers. This can cut your cooking time and food costs. Try to use small amounts of meat, poultry, fish, or eggs.

Add variety to family meals

• In addition to cooking family favorites, try new, low-cost recipes or food combinations. If you usually serve mashed potatoes, try Baked Crispy Potatoes or Potato Salad for a change. Make meals easier to prepare by trying new ways to cook foods.
• Try using a slow cooker or crock-pot to cook stews or soups. They cook foods without constant watching. Buy fresh fruits in season like apples or peaches. Dried fruits like raisins or prunes, raw vegetables, crackers, and whole wheat bread are also good ideas for snacks.
• It is useful to make your meal plan at the same stage of the week. Before you start, look through the fridge and see what is left in there from the previous week. You'll often find enough ingredients to make a pasta sauce or casserole, using food that otherwise would be wasted.
• Once healthy meal planning is established as part of your routine, you will find it becomes second nature. Gradually, you will build up a whole range of home-made meals that you can cook quickly and easily, and which are much better for your health than ready-made supermarket meals.

Lifestyle is key for weight maintenance

• Keeping lost weight off is all about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Watching television, and improving eating habits have bad effects on weight. Although it is true that most people gain weight as they age, it is not inevitable and, most likely, not healthy.
• The major reason for the weight gain is a change in body composition. As people age, levels of physical activity tend to decline and that, along with some other factors, leads to a gradual reduction in lean body mass. If you are fifty years old and you are consuming the same number of calories you consumed when you were twenty, you will gain weight.
• The researchers concluded that making positive lifestyle changes has the potential to result in modest weight loss or weight maintenance even when weight loss is not a goal.
• Women and men who have been able to lose weight successfully and keep it off have learned to incorporate key positive behavior changes into their lifestyle.
• Four lifestyle changes common to successful weight losers are consistently making wise food choices, exercising often, regularly eating breakfast, and frequently monitoring their weight.

Exercise Often & Regularly Eat Breakfast

• Exercise appears to be essential to weight maintenance. Walking and some other type of planned exercise, such as aerobics classes, swimming, or biking 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week are very good.

• The researchers concluded that eating breakfast appears to be a positive lifestyle habit, one that seems to play a role in preventing weight gain.

Make Wise Food Choices

• A key strategy people use to prevent pounds from reappearing is remaining vigilant about what and how much they eat. Everyone should consciously choosing foods that are low in calories and low in fat. Although this level of fat intake is within the recommended range of 20 to 35 percent, it is much lower than what the typical American consumes.

Frequently Monitor Ones Weight

• If women and men want lasting weight loss, they need to take steps to ensure that the pounds never come back. And according to the research, the best way for both genders to prevent pound rebound is to adopt a healthy lifestyle.
• The good news is that if weight is lost through a weight-loss approach that is based on lifestyle modification, the changes that are needed to maintain the weight loss have already been learned and engrained into ones everyday life.
• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is easier when it is the norm in the house and couples are working together toward the same goal.
• Achieving lasting weight loss is not easy, but there are ways to make the process easier. One way is to make lifestyle modification the foundation of any approach used to get the weight off and reach a healthy body weight. This all resort to :
• Making wise food choices
• Being physically active
• Developing stress management techniques, time management expertise
• Creating a supportive environment