Health working to cut heavy burden of obesity

He wasn’t fat, but wasn’t slim and probably squeezed into the ‘let’s keep an eye on him’ category.

But give it ten years and there is every chance he’ll be one of those characters you see in tracksuit bottoms and a top they’ve had to order off a special website, the type who think that Snow Hill is an actual hill and who seem to be cursing gravity with every other breath. Because all this starts with crisps for breakfast.

According to figures released during a recent Scrutiny hearing, 38 per cent of adults in Jersey are overweight and a further 18 per cent (that’s just over 17,000 people) are obese. So, more than half of adults in Jersey are carrying more fat than their beating hearts would like.

The figures are not too dissimilar to those of the UK, but it doesn’t make them any less embarrassing.

Fortunately, the Health department is developing an obesity strategy which it is hoped will eventually help trim our ever expanding waists.

But is anyone else thinking that as far as overweight adults are concerned, such a strategy is doomed to fail?

By the time we hit 18, we are all old enough to make some pretty simple decisions, so is there really anything the Health service can do to help those who can’t decide for themselves whether dining out at MacDonald’s every other night could create a few weight issues?

Anyone who thinks the department can should tune in to next week’s veritable-parade-of-misery-cum-accidental-comedy that is Channel 4’s Secret Eaters.

The premise of the programme is simple: Take an overweight couple who think that all they eat is lettuce. Let them explain to the viewers that life is just not fair because lettuce really isn’t that fattening. Install some secret cameras in their home. Employ a couple of private detectives to follow them around for a week. And then let said viewers sit back and watch how the couple spent the week gorging themselves on confectionary and junk food.

Perhaps I just have an impeccable memory, but if I had shovelled five burgers, three pies, six pizzas, 12 litres of coke and ten pints of beer down my throat during the previous week, I’d probably remember.

And that’s the point. They do remember, but either don’t care or just kid themselves that their diet really isn’t that bad.

And they are exactly the sort of people who end up getting diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and then claim that life really isn’t fair because all they ever eat is lettuce, and that when they are not eating lettuce they are jogging along St Aubin’s Bay or pounding the treadmill at the Fort. They essentially re-write history to make themselves feel better for all the bad choices they have made.

Obesity and diabetes may, in the long term, prove to be a significant burden on the Health service, and for that reason alone it could be argued that tackling these two evils head-on would be a wise move.

But unlike smoking and alcoholism, eating a poor diet and living a sedentary lifestyle is not an addiction. It is a life choice.

Most of us enjoy a takeaway or a few glasses of something alcoholic from time to time.

We all stand on the ground floor of M&S on King Street and decide to take the escalator instead of the stairs.

And most of us have decided against spending the day on Portelet beach at one time or another because we can’t be bothered conquering the steps back up after a hard day lying down on the sand.

But most of us know when it’s time to stretch our legs and time to lay off the junk.

There is, though, a group of society who don’t have the life skills to make these decisions: children – evidenced by the fact that they will willingly eat crisps for breakfast.

According to the figures released at Scrutiny, 15 per cent of five-year-olds are overweight and a further ten per cent are obese.

That means one in four children in this Island turns up for reception class for the first time with a serious weight problem.

Looking around, it’s easy to see how. You see them in town, walking into MacDonald’s for a lunch that is not a once-a-month special treat but an almost daily routine.

You see them in the park, their heads in an iPad and their hands in a packet of sweets, and you know that the closest they have come to exercise that day is playing football on their Nintendo DS.

You know that when their eyes are not fixed on a console computer game they are staring into an over-sized television in a living room cluttered with unnecessary home comforts that make popping out to play sport with your friends an unnecessary chore.

And you know that whole evenings and whole weekends are lost lounging around inside, slowly piling on the pounds. And whose fault is this? It’s not the child’s. You can’t blame a five-year-old for eating sweets and crisps while sitting on a comfy sofa. Blame them in 15 years’ time, when they are old enough to make those choices for themselves.

The blame for Jersey’s – and the UK’s – bulging bellies lies squarely at the feet of the parents, as they have the power to shape how tomorrow’s adults live their lives.

Much is already being done to steer youngsters on a healthy path, and any obesity strategy should focus almost entirely on promoting exercise and sensible eating to our children.

But, given that so many Island youngsters are being allowed to live lives that are setting themselves up for heart disease, diabetes and God knows how many other weight-related problems during their adult years, perhaps it’s a parenting strategy, not an obesity strategy, that the Island really needs.

Richard Heath