GPs will be asked to identify patients who are putting on weight under a new national programme to help fight obesity.

Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said it was time for Britain to “get back in shape” in order to protect millions of people from a host of obesity-related diseases.

Under the scheme, family doctors will be asked to identify anyone who has gained weight and is at risk of diabetes – particularly those aged below 40.

They will then be offered tests for pre-diabetes, followed by healthy lifestyle advice and close monitoring to ensure they are eating better and exercising more.

It comes as new figures show Britain is now the second fattest nation in Europe, with almost 25 per cent of Britons classified as obese – compared with a European average of 16.7 per cent.

Source: Doctors told to report patients who put on weight – Telegraph

An obesity pill that transforms ‘bad’ fat to ‘good’ could replace exercise, helping people shed pounds and with them their risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

That is the claim by scientists who believe they have made a breakthrough in the battle against the bulge.

They said the discovery could be ‘the first step towards a pill that can replace the treadmill’.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute at Havard and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified two compounds that can turn white or ‘bad’ fat cells into brown ‘good’ fat cells in the body.

When a person eats too many calories without burning them off, they are stored as white fat cells by adult stem cells.

That is what causes people to pile on the pounds.

The new study found two small molecules that convert fat stem cells, which would normally produce white fat, into brown-like fat cells.

These brown fat cells burn excess energy and subsequently reduce the size and numbers of white fat cells.

Associate professor Chad Cowan, at Harvard, said: ‘What we were really impressed by is that there are some compounds that have this same kind of effect when they are administered to animals, but when you remove them, the effect goes away.

‘But what we saw here was a stable conversion of the white fat cells to brown cells.

‘You’re constantly replenishing your fat tissue so if you were on a medication to convert the cells, each new fat cell would be more metabolically active and would convert to brown fat over time.’

The researchers said this reduces the chances of a person developing type 2 diabetes, or any of the other conditions related to a build-up of fat.

One of the two molecules is already approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis, but scientists warned a pill is some way off.

They warned the compounds could damage the immune system.

The obesity pill that could replace exercise by turning ‘bad’ fat to ‘good’ | Daily Mail Online

A British man whom media had identified as the fattest person alive has died of pneumonia after a devastating battle with an eating disorder that brought him to 980 pounds.

News.com.au reported that Keith Martin, of London, underwent a gastric sleeve operation that removed three-quarters of his stomach, and was bound to his bed eight months before his death. He was 44.

According to The Daily Mirror, Martin had consumed about 20,000 calories a day in a diet that included six-egg fried breakfasts, and lunches and dinners with pizza, kebabs, takeout food and Big Macs. He also reportedly consumed 3.5 liters of coffee and 2 liters of carbonated drinks every day.

“Keith, like many people, had some emotional issues, and he turned to food for comfort,” Kesava Mannur, the surgeon who fitted Martin with his gastric belt at Homerton University Hospital in London, told The Daily Mirror.

“That type of behavior is nothing new, but what is new is how easy it is for people in that situation to buy a lot of cheap food,” said Mannur, who urged the U.K. government to consider a fast-food tax to help the morbidly obese.

Martin shared his story in a documentary that aired in the U.K., according to news.com.au. He said he lost his mother at 16— also to pneumonia— and had struggled with depression and anxiety ever since. He began to gain a serious amount of weight in his 20s, when he was severely depressed.

Martin was unemployed and spent his days playing video games and watching TV.

“I started eating to ease the pain, and before I knew it, I was bingeing every time something upset me,” Martin said during the documentary. “I’ve always been depressed. I am an agoraphobic— I’m afraid of public places— but it was never treated.”

“I just want to be happy, without needing food to make me happy.”

‘Fattest man in the world’ dies at age 44 | Fox News

A British man whom media had identified as the fattest person alive has died of pneumonia after a devastating battle with an eating disorder that brought him to 980 pounds.

News.com.au reported that Keith Martin, of London, underwent a gastric sleeve operation that removed three-quarters of his stomach, and was bound to his bed eight months before his death. He was 44.

According to The Daily Mirror, Martin had consumed about 20,000 calories a day in a diet that included six-egg fried breakfasts, and lunches and dinners with pizza, kebabs, takeout food and Big Macs. He also reportedly consumed 3.5 liters of coffee and 2 liters of carbonated drinks every day.

“Keith, like many people, had some emotional issues, and he turned to food for comfort,” Kesava Mannur, the surgeon who fitted Martin with his gastric belt at Homerton University Hospital in London, told The Daily Mirror.

“That type of behavior is nothing new, but what is new is how easy it is for people in that situation to buy a lot of cheap food,” said Mannur, who urged the U.K. government to consider a fast-food tax to help the morbidly obese.

Martin shared his story in a documentary that aired in the U.K., according to news.com.au. He said he lost his mother at 16— also to pneumonia— and had struggled with depression and anxiety ever since. He began to gain a serious amount of weight in his 20s, when he was severely depressed.

Martin was unemployed and spent his days playing video games and watching TV.

“I started eating to ease the pain, and before I knew it, I was bingeing every time something upset me,” Martin said during the documentary. “I’ve always been depressed. I am an agoraphobic— I’m afraid of public places— but it was never treated.”

“I just want to be happy, without needing food to make me happy.”

‘Fattest man in the world’ dies at age 44 | Fox News

IT HAS become a cliché to call obesity a big problem for a reason: more than 2.1 billion people, or nearly 30% of the global population, are overweight or obese. Excess weight leads to about 5% of worldwide deaths. On current trends, almost half of the world’s adults will be fat by 2030. Over the past three decades, according to a study in the Lancet, a medical journal, no nation has slimmed down.

It’s enough to drive a person to comfort eating. But a new study from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the consultancy’s research arm, offers some hope. It looks at 74 anti-obesity measures around the world, and judges the cost and impact of the 44 for which there were sufficient data. None alone could do much, it concludes, but all 44 together could mean about a fifth of overweight people achieving a reasonable waistline within five to ten years.

Source: Heavy weapons | The Economist

Obesity used to be an issue primarily in well-off countries. It was one of those things flippantly dismissed as a “first-world problem.” Now people are packing on the pounds all over the planet. In some fast-growing cities in China, for example, half the people are now overweight.

A new report from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company finds that more than 2.1 billion people nearly 30 percent of the world’s population are overweight a bit chubby or obese just plain fat.

Over the last decade, no country in the world managed to trim its obesity prevalence. Some of the worst rates of obesity are now in the developing world.

“It seems that many of the emerging markets that are on this phenomenally fast growth trajectory are on an even faster obesity trajectory,” says Richard Dobbs, the head of the McKinsey Global Institute and one of the authors of the obesity report.

Indeed, the number of people categorized as excessively heavy is growing faster than the buffet line at a Vegas casino. The report predicts that if current trends continue, 41 percent of adults in the world will be overweight by the year 2030. The report also finds that burgeoning waistlines have a ripple effect.

“This is a massive global economic issue,” says Dobbs. “It’s largely been left to the health people but actually it’s having a huge economic effect and there really hasn’t been a systematic view of how to address it.”

The McKinsey report estimates the economic impact of obesity around the world at $2 trillion a year. Part of that figure is the cost of caring for diseases that are linked to obesity, like Type 2 diabetes. But there’s an even bigger cost in “the loss of productivity,” Dobbs says. “People suffering from obesity often work less. They have to take more time off sick. They retire early or even die early.”

The United States has the highest obesity rate in the world: 34.9 percent. And while Americans are known for enjoying fast food and being “big,” the other countries in the top five fattest nations might surprise you: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and South Africa.

Dobbs says it’s going to take far more than banning super-size sodas to address what the new report calls a “critical global issue.”

“The challenge we have with addressing obesity is we are fighting thousands of years of evolution,” he says. “Our bodies have a natural inclination to want to horde energy when we have it available. [We want] to horde food and to horde fat.”

Programs to get individuals to eat right and exercise more must be a part of any weight loss effort. But the report makes it clear that focusing just on the eating habits of the morbidly obese — in other words, blaming the victim — won’t solve anything.

This growing global problem is result of social and economic changes that have swept the world over the last century.

Food, for instance, is relatively far cheaper than it used to be.

“In the United States, the share of average household income spent on food fell from 42 percent in 1900 to 30 percent in 1950 and to 13.5 percent in 2003,” the report notes.

Fat Thanks to Sona S. for the tip!

The Whole World Is Fat! And That Ends Up Costing $2 Trillion A Year : Goats and Soda : NPR

Washington (AFP) – Fast-food restaurants in the United States are “disproportionately” targeting black children and kids in middle-income and rural areas, according to a newly published study.

Researchers at Arizona State University and University of Illinois at Chicago looked at 6,716 fast-food outlets nationwide to check the extent of indoor and outdoor marketing aimed at youngsters.

Marketing towards children ranged from free toys to ads featuring sports celebrities and cartoon characters, as well as play areas and promotions for kids’ birthday parties.

“Majority black communities, rural areas and middle-income communities are disproportionately exposed (to child-directed marketing) and specifically to indoor displays of kids’ meal toys, a popular strategy among chain restaurants,” the study said.

“In light of these findings, it is important to urge the fast-food industry to limit children’s exposure to marketing that promotes consumption of unhealthy food choices.”

via Fast food targeting black kids in US – Yahoo News.

A new Arizona State study is generating a lot of talk on the subject of why some women gain weight after starting an exercise regimen.

New York Times physical education columnist Gretchen Reynolds says the group was a cross-section of relatively sedentary but healthy women in their 30s who were overweight.

“They walked 30 minutes three times a week, and at the end of 12 weeks, most of the group of women had gained weight. And they have gained fat, not muscle,” Reynolds says.

The eating habits of the women were relatively normal and didn’t change after the study began, Reynolds says. Scientists noticed women were gaining or losing weight about a month into the study.

The study did find that the women who lost weight in the first four weeks continued to lose weight.

But the study, which was published last month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, did not track the eating habits of the 81 women. Nor did the study track the women’s movements away from the lab.

So, it is not known whether the women who gained fat ate more after exercising or rested more after exercising.

“So the takeaway is, if you want to use exercise to lose weight, get on the bathroom scales after a month, and if you’re not losing weight, look at the rest of your life — make sure you’re not eating more [or] sitting too much and you might actually succeed in losing weight,” she says.

Study examines why women gain weight after exercise – WTOP