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Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030
An anonymous reader writes "Welcome to the club, Euro friends. A World Health Organization analysis concludes that within 15 years a majority of Europeans will be obese or severely overweight. In almost all countries the proportion of overweight and obesity in males was projected to increase – to reach 75% in UK, 80% in Czech Republic, Spain and Poland, and 90% in Ireland, the highest level calculated. Women fare a little better. In reviewing the results, the lead researcher said: "Our study presents a worrying picture of rising obesity across Europe. Policies to reverse this trend are urgently needed.""
BMI is a [poor] approximation of body fat percentage (that article lists a few ways to measure it; I know people with eletronic scales that use bioelectrical impedance analysis when you step on them barefoot). Wikipedia has a section on it in the BMI article including a scatterplot of BMI vs. body fat % I hadn't seen before. Basically, BMI is used because it is much easier to measure than body fat %, but it does not tell the whole story. Importantly, BMI is far more meaningful for a population than for an individual because the error cancels out to some extent.
Sorry, diet is a complicated topic, so this is going to be long...
Yes, we have different carbs now. One of the most significant features of the modern diet is how we mill flour; with steel milling machines which produce finer, more doughy flour than traditional stone mills. This pushes the glycemic index (the speed at which carbs get digested into sugars and absorbed into our bloodstreams) of most bread and baked good above that of regular table sugar (sucrose).
No, fat increases obesity too. Fat contains more available calories per gramme than sugar.
Another problem is the reduced amounts of protein in modern foods. We have to eat a lot more food, i.e. we eat, get full, but get hungry again sooner, because our bodies aren't getting the protein we need. This could also explain the massive increase in meat consumption in order to compensate. However, large amounts of protein in one sitting can't compensate for an overall lack of protein. We need to eat protein with every meal/snack.
And no, you can't live without carbohydrates, you'd die of starvation. Our brains can only metabolise carbs, they cannot break down fats and proteins to use for energy like other parts of our bodies. If we don't get enough carbs in our diets, our brains start to "digest themselves" producing ketones which make your breath smell of pears. It also provokes feelings of depression and lethargy. And we've all hear of low blood sugar and how it impairs our ability to think and work.
If you don't want to get obese, don't go on calorie control diets; they just don't work and human will power isn't enough in "normal" people. If you have an eating disorder, on the other hand, yes, it'll work but you'll make yourself ill at the same time. Also, most raw vegetables have very little nutritional value; they need to be cooked (lightly) to release their nutrients and make them available to our digestive systems. The most effective approach is to cut out processed foods from your diet, although that's easier said than done; millions of years of evolution has predisposed us to select sugary, salty, fatty foods over healthier options, and most people go through a certain degree of "withdrawal" when they change their dietary habits, e.g. healthy food is less appetising, and cravings for "something else."
The quality of our carb intake makes a huge difference. Many whole grains (but not all, check them on glycemic index/load tables) are "slow release" and so keep your bood sugar at a fairly stable, moderate level for longer, so you feel the need to eat less frequently, e.g. basmati rice, oats (porridge is great for breakfast), and barley (great in soups). Steer well clear of most breakfast cereals of the whether they have sugar added or not; the grains are usually processed in ways that make them worse than sugar, e.g. puffed wheat or steamed and rolled corn.
A rule of thumb that seems to work well in most cases is, "Eat more plants, eat more non-meat protein, eat higher quality carbs."
If you like an emotional/visual approach, this website's fun: http://www.sugarstacks.com/
If you want to know more about carbs from a research evidence based perspective, "The New Glucose Revolution" is a good book. However, beware of caveats such a fructose being low on the glycemic index - It's just as bad, if not worse than sucrose, as has been revealed recently in the media. In large amounts, it also overstresses your liver.
Happy and healthy eating!