Cedric Cruz, Staff Writer
Featured image courtesy of Michael Guio
Obesity has been a hot topic in Canada recently, especially since a Senate committee announced early in March that Canada’s Food Guide, the go-to reference for healthy eating, needs to be drastically overhauled to deal with this spreading health problem, which the committee referred to as an “epidemic.”
The report showed that since 1980, the number of obese adults has doubled and the number of obese children has tripled. Among the industrialized countries, this puts Canada at fifth place in the number of obese adults and at sixth place in the number of obese children.
The effects of obesity can be devastating. In Canada, there is now a new diagnosis of diabetes every 20 minutes. Apart from diabetes, obesity can also lead to other chronic diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and cancers including breast, kidney, liver, and pancreatic. Obesity is responsible for a 10th of all premature deaths between the ages of 20 and 64 in Canada.
Not only is obesity a health issue, it is also a public health issue when considering that the cost of health care and lost productivity is estimated to be between $4 to $7 billion in Canada annually.
The report identified diets consisting heavily of processed foods and a lack of regular exercise as the two most significant contributors to the rise of obesity.
To curb this disturbing rise in obesity, the report made several recommendations.
These include creating a nationwide campaign to combat obesity, a complete overhaul of Canada’s Food Guide, clearer nutritional labelling, imposing a tax on the purchase of sugar-sweetened and artificially-sweetened beverages, and encouraging doctors to give specific prescriptions of exercise to their patients.
Researchers at York have also identified the spread of obesity among Canadian adults, especially among university-aged millennials, which they have expressed concerns about, most recently in a study released in September 2015.
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