UAE and Arab Countries Explodes with Obesity

Here are the numbers according to national study.

10-year-old male UAE children had 1.7 times the rate of overweight compared to international standards and 1.9 times at 18 years.

Similarly, female UAE children have 1.8 times the rate of overweight compared to international standards at 10 and 18 years of age.

Obesity was 2.3-fold higher among UAE males at 14 years compared to international standards, and increased to 3.6 times at 18 years of age. Among UAE female children, obesity was same as males at 14 years, 2.3 times than the international standards.

At 18 years of age, UAE female obesity was 1.9-fold higher than the international standard, nearly one-half the rate of obesity among UAE males at the same age.

WHO reported that 13.5 per cent of the UAE population was diabetic, the second-highest prevalence of the disease in the world; this figure is expected to rise to 19.3 per cent by 2030. The report also said over 50 per cent of men and women in the UAE were overweight or obese.

How did it happen?

Our lifestyle has changed our earning has gone up and with it came obesity and other health problems, restaurants are everywhere and cooking at home is thing of the past and considered waste of time for today's young couple.

Our consumption of red meat is highest in the world, eating food rich in animal fat is the road to obesity, and lack of exercise makes it easier for fat to stay happily in our body. Only exercise we practice is while shopping and it is not enough to burn our body fat.

School children dine outside after school, having lunch at home is unfashionable and fun time is playing computer games for hours, not like the old days where we played outside the house in hot sun.

Our kids are used to eat processed food and fast food, processed unhealthy snacks is available in every home.

Saying all that it is clear that obesity starts from home, kids learn what is healthy and what is not from home, parents need to practice eating healthy food and pass it to their children and we need to introduce greens to our kids eating habits.

It should not be about what we like to eat, it has to be about what is healthy. Without parents playing their parts at home obesity problem will not go away and parents need to understand that obese kids will put financial and emotional pressure on the family.

Source: articlesbase.com

Palestinian Women Have The Third Highest Obesity Rate in The World

Obesity kills an average 20,000 people every year in Saudi Arabia, where nearly 70 per cent of the population are suffering from overweight, a Saudi medical expert has said.



Source: projectworldawareness.com

Obesity Kills 20,000 people a Year in Saudi Arabia

An average 20,000 people die in Saudi Arabia every year as a result of heart problems and other diseases associated with obesity, a newspaper in the Gulf oil producer reported on Monday.

The high death rate has prompted the Gulf kingdom to upgrade surgical treatment of overweight and this boosted spending on such operations to nearly SR17 billion a year, Alriyadh said, quoting Dr Abdul Mohsen Al Dhakri, Director of academic affairs at the Royal National Guards.

“Obesity kills an average 20,000 people in Saudi Arabia every year and most of the deaths are a result of cardiac arrest, infarction, stroke and renal failure,” he told an international conference on obesity in the eastern town of Khobar.

He said nearly 98 per cent of the surgeries conducted in Saudi Arabia last year to treat overweight were successful.

“Obesity is a dangerous phenomenon…it could be contagious within the family which does not follow a nutritious and good eating habits.”

Source: emirates247.com

Arab Diets

TYRE is a small province on Lebanon's border with Israel, a place of poor tobacco farmers and tin-roofed shacks. Only about half the population has enough to eat. Many say that, in the past six months, somebody in the household has spent a day without food or gone hungry to bed. But there is something odd about the burden of malnutrition. While in hungry households just over a quarter of children under five are too short for their age—a classic symptom of malnutrition—a third are overweight, malnourished in the opposite sense. Tyre is suffering malnutrition and obesity simultaneously.

This “dual burden” is growing everywhere, but nowhere as quickly as in the Arab world. Between 15% and 25% of Arab children under five are too short for their age and between 5% and 15% are underweight. Almost half of pregnant Egyptian women are anaemic, reflecting an iron deficiency often caused by poor diets. Yet a survey in 2006 reckoned that 30% of Egyptian adults were obese. Obesity estimates for Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were even higher: between 35% and 45%.

The most obvious explanation for this paradox is that the two problems exist in separate realms: obesity among the well-to-do, under-nutrition among the poor. Yet this is not the whole story. Obesity and malnutrition exist not only in the same country but within the same community, the same household and even, strange as it may seem, in the same person.

A study by Hala Ghattas of the American University of Beirut looks at three marginal populations in Lebanon: the villages of Tyre, a group of Bedouins and Palestinian refugees. All are relatively poor, but a third of the worst-off Bedouin were still obese and another quarter were overweight. In Tyre, some villages are largely unaffected; one, called Tayr Harfa, is many times worse off than its neighbours. Problems of under- and over-nutrition appear in the same communities.

But how can they appear in the same household? It is largely because of the way the body reacts to changing diets. If a woman is severely malnourished in the womb or during her first two years of life, her metabolism will change permanently. She will store spare calories as fat—an insurance against future hard times. If 20 years later the family gets a more plentiful yet still poor diet (with a lot of calories but not many micronutrients, such as iron or vitamins) she will become overweight or obese, while her children will suffer nutritional deficiency, such as anaemia or blindness. They will be undernourished and she will be obese. As countries move from extreme poverty to middle-income status, this move from starvation rations to calorie-rich, nutrition-poor diets has become more common. In Egypt, 12% of children are stunted and have obese mothers.

The mothers will not escape problems from nutritional deficiency. They still have an unhealthy diet. In Egypt, Peru and Mexico, about half the women with anaemia are overweight or obese. They are simultaneously over- and underfed: too many calories, not enough micronutrients.

Source:  economist.com

Obesity Among Arab Women

According to the Wall Street Journal, about half the women in the Middle East are overweight or obese:

In Bahrain, 83% of women are obese or overweight, according to International Obesity Task Force, a London-based think tank that tries to persuade countries to tackle the problem. In the United Arab Emirates the figure is 74%; in Lebanon it is 75%, the groups says. By comparison, about 62% of American women are overweight or obese. The prevalence of childhood obesity in the Middle East has risen rapidly in recent years and diabetes is spreading across the region, according to WHO.

Even predominantly Arab North African countries without oil wealth are wrestling with the challenge, in part because of a traditional preference for larger women. Half of all women in Tunisia and Morocco are overweight or obese — two standard measures of a person’s weight — according to a 2001 study published in the U.S.-based Journal of Nutrition.

What I found disturbing in this article was the statement:

The belief that rotund women are more desirable as wives helps explain why much of the Arab world — which stretches from the Persian Gulf in the east to Mauritania in North Africa — is experiencing an explosion of obesity.

As an Arab woman myself (who is currently struggling to lose weight) I totally disagree with this faulty statement. The reason there is obesity among Arab women is mainly due to lack of exercise and the lack of awareness about healthy diets. The author’s statement is a generalization, as he (or is it she) began the article discussing the issue of force feeding among women in Mauritania:

Force-feeding is usually done by girls’ mothers or grandmothers; men play little direct role. The girls’ stomachs are sometimes vigorously massaged in order to loosen the skin and make it easier to consume even greater quantities of food. … Local officials say some women are so fat they can barely move. In [a Mauritanian] survey, 15% of the women said their skin split as a result of overeating. One-fifth of women said one of their toes or fingers were broken to make them eat.

Well, If Mauritanian women want to be obese, then that’s their problem. I’m not gonna speak for other Arab women, but I can certainly speak for Jordanian women. In my country, the skinnier the woman is the better she looks! Obesity is never encouraged, in fact it is a turn-off!

Source: http://natashatynes.com

Obesity More Prevalent inTanzania Women

Around 25% of women in the Kinondoni municipality, Dar es Salaam are obese, compared to around 9% of men, according to new research. Also, obesity was more prevalent in people with high socioeconomic status (29%), compared to medium or low socioeconomic status (14% and 11%, respectively). Compared to single people, people who were married or cohabitating with someone else were more likely to be obese; however, widows and widowers were also at a greater risk for obesity. The overall obesity prevalence in the Kinondoni municipality (19%) is higher compared to other parts of the country, and suggests the obesity prevalence in Tanzania is on the rise.

"Prevalence of obesity and associated risk factors among adults in Kinondoni municipal district, Dar es Salaam Tanzania"

Source: procor.org

Obesity is The New Black Plague of Arab World

By 2015, WHO predicts that about 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and over 700 million people will be classified as obese. Now, 400 million people have a body mass index exceeding 30kg/m² according to WHO criteria.  Obesity is not just a phenomenon that affects adults: in 2005, 20 million children under 5 years were overweight in the world. Obesity is a recent, complex and highly worrying phenomenon.

Obesity is an epidemic of utmost importance in Arab world, especially in the Gulf countries -KSA included. And Google Arab users behavior confirms this trend. However, information is not missing on the Net and health Websites (like this private one in Dubai) are increasing. Obesity is often seen as a developing countries disease due to changes in eating habits (high calorie diets) and more urban lifestyles.

Country	Percentage of obese population	Country	Percentage of diabetic population
Nauru	78,50%	Nauru	30,70%
Tonga	56,00%	United Arab Emirates	19,50%
Saudi Arabia	35,60%	Saudi Arabia	16,70%
United Arab Emirates	33,70%	Bahrain	15,20%
United States	32,20%	Koweit	14,40%
Bahrain	28,90%	Oman	13,10%
Koweit	28,80%	Tonga	12,90%
Seychelles	25,10%	Mauritius	11,10%
United Kingdom	24,20%	Egypt	11,00%

Ranking of the countries with the highest percentages of obesity and diabetes (Source : Government Office for Science)

Obesity is a significant risk factor of comorbidities and mortality, most importantly from cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes, but also from cancer and chronic diseases. It is a social phenomenon and a major public health concern for MENA countries.

In July 2009, Eric A. Finkelstein leaded a survey (available on Health Affairs) about the correlation between the increase of obesity in the United States and the one of health spending (MediCare, MediCaid and private insurers).

The increased prevalence of obesity is responsible for almost $40 billion of increased medical spending through 2006, including $7 billion in Medicare prescription drug costs. We estimate that the medical costs of obesity could have risen to $147 billion per year by 2008.

 

Obesity: a significant risk factor of comorbidities (Source : http://www.dwp.gov.uk)

In the Middle East, figures are alarming and governments (and private investors) are promoting solutions to reverse the trend of obesity. However, tackling obesity raises a good many questions.

In the Gulf countries (KSA included), obesity rate among women hits 70% (50% among males). Saudi Arabia opened a debate last year “over women’s sports, particularly women’s gyms, physical education instruction in girls’ schools, and competitive sports clubs for women.” A controversial fatwa reminds that women should not go against Allah’s will who created them to stay home and to educate their children

Public awareness campaigns to help tackle the issues of overweight and obesity are a major challenge. That is why, the Ministry of Health in UAE has launched a “No to Obesity” programme, which will include health awareness lectures, dietary practices and physical training programmes.

The problem of nutrition is obesity… and some severe nutrient deficiencies

We must bear in mind, as GAIN (Globale Alliance for Improve Nutrition) experts said in Dubai on May, 2010, that the problem of nutrition in the Gulf states is obviously linked with obesity but also with some severe nutrient deficiencies. Indeed, a government report reveals that 35 percent of infants (6-22 months) are suffering from anemia, while 41 percent of UAE women have a deficiency of folic acid and 35 percent are obese.

Against obesity (and also to be slender like famous movie stars and models), most women of all ages are seeking out “slimming medications” usually including appetite suppressors, fat burners or fat absorption inhibitors. In spite of the warnings against the harmful side effects (welling in the stomach, anemia, low calcium levels to inflammation, diarrhea, colon problems, heart palpitations or nervous disorders), the lack of regulation and control allows to purchase them everywhere (hairdresser, mall, etc.). The Jerusalem Post on July, 6, 2010 said that in many Middle Eastern countries slimming pills are loosely regulated, giving rise to a vast market of unregulated and sometimes dangerous pharmaceuticals, moreover when used in self-medication without the monitoring of a professional.

The very interesting benchmarking analysis made by Antoine Flahaut, chairman of EHESP, on his blog, deserves special attention: he wonders about the French paradox (high fat diet vs. good obesity figures and myocardial infarction). According to him, and to the experts of the Strategic Analysis Center regular eating habits are the main raisons of explanation. He follows the results of a study published on March 2010 in the Pediatrics review showing that on 8550 American four-year-olds, those who regularly (5 times) ate dinner with the family, got enough sleep and watched less than two hours of TV a day were 40 percent less likely to be obese.

Prevention and information are the crux of the matter to tackle this epidemic. The partnership between all the stakeholders (both institutional and private) is also a necessary prerequisite for establish effective public health policies in the long term against obesity. Nevertheless, these public policies to prevent obesity have to be in it for the long term to change habits and behavior.

^{Source: vincentfromentin.fr}

 

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