Obesity: England’s most pressing healthcare challenge?

Obesity is one of the biggest public health challenges facing the UK. In this new film, RCP special adviser on obesity Professor Rachel Batterham OBE meets leading experts and patients to consider what needs to be done to take meaningful action on this complex problem.

The documentary explores the latest science on how and why people develop obesity and the most recent available treatments. It considers obesity through the lens of health inequalities: how some groups are more affected than others, and how reducing stigma and elevating the patient voice are crucial in tackling the issue.

[frankpost]

If it was genetics, the percentage of overweight and obese people would be the same as in 1970. It is the changed diet since the 1980s that causes this. Too much processed food with high sugar and high carbs.

[rzrbck]

Blaming genetics for the obesity problem is such a cop-out. Our supermarkets are atrocious: packed to the brim with nutritionally-deficient, ultra-processed rubbish. As a society, we simply eat too much of the wrong things, and we eat much too frequently. Obesity is a problem with elevated insulin. Minimise your carbohydrate intake, focus on fats and proteins for satiety, and watch the weight fall off.

[simoncooper]

It's not genes that make us struggle with our weight; it's weight that makes us struggle with our jeans.

[bobscubamall]

Unbelievable, blame peoples DNA rather than the corporate food industry.
Even more terrifyingly this statement is being made by the country’s top physicians.

[sensoeirensen]

I never saw ANYONE laughing at fat people at the gym at all. Never ever! It's quite the opposite true; we encourage them to stay and fight the fat together. Most people in the gym are friendly, but have also their earphones in. Gym is for your training routine, not for flirting or looking (good or bad at others). At least this is my experience.

[haserlitelfl]

The moment genetics are brought up as a focal point was the moment this whole documentary breaks apart.

[vanessasimmons]

She talks genetics but when I was growing up there was ONE obese girl in my village. I hardly ever saw fat people. Look at videos about life in the 50/60s and you can count on one hand the overweight. Genetics is bollocks. It’s fast food, convenience food, laziness and greed!

[henghistbluetooth]

This person seems to be absolutely determined to avoid blaming sugar and carbs that we were told was the healthiest diet since 1977.

[josemarianacher]

I think they are lying. They should talk more about how the context has changed in the last fifty, sixty years. Junk and processed food are available 24/7 nowadays and these are cheap and very addictive. In some neighbourhoods you cannot buy real food anymore, only junk food, and that is a real problem among others.

[WillJ]

Empty lives, boring jobs, financial insecurity and the availability of cheap takeaway and supermarket foods full of sugar, starches and addictive chemicals allied to the increased use of private cars has left most of us obese or overweight.

[nickmc]

I think it's a few factors: abundance of cheap high carb food; abuse of alcohol being completely normalised; lack of walking (which doesn't tend to make you hungry unlike heavy exercise) and lack of stigma. Stigma is not always a bad thing.

[NormanZealandMalana]

There are no obese people, in a famine. I was obese three years ago. Now I'm not, and am the strongest version of myself, so far. I ate less, and moved more. And it worked. Stop telling people that they are powerless to make a difference. For most people, that's simply not true.

[jackcandy]

Without a doubt one of the worst films on obesity I have seen in recent times. It is totally bypassing the real reasons for obesity. Genetics? Come on... That is a mostly irrelevant side-issue, but the real reason is eating rubbish. And tons of it... No mention of what industrial sugar, or processed food do to your system... The solution is NOT to treat obesity better, but to avoid it as much as possible: By educating people, by enforcing laws on unhealthy foods etc. Was this financed by the food industry or the pharmaceutics industry? Surely one of the two.

[Livvy]

When I tried to "lightly" discuss nutrition and weight to someone who is overweight, I get a lot of pushback. "Oh I eat vegetables, and oatmeal, and I don't eat rice because of the arsenic". As a nurse, I have never had to take care of a patient with arsenic poisoning . Meanwhile I watch them eat foods with ingredients you can't pronounce.

[mssdn]

I don’t buy into that genes cause you to be overweight. When I was at school in the 60’s and 70’s only one of our class was overweight, but not by much. We ate freshly cooked food, much smaller portions and meals out were a very occasional treat. Take out food, calorific coffees and home delivered foods were unheard of. Nowadays so many children and teens are very overweight, saying it’s genetic is a get out of jail free card. The lady who said some families eat whatever they like and don’t get fat whilst other families do get fat. That’s bizarre, has she considered that if you swapped their diets over the weights would be reversed too

[thomasnewton]

You can't blame genetics for bean over weight when they are eating to many takeaways and drinking to many fizzy drinks and eating a rubbish diet People have control of their diet but often people like to try and find an easy excuse rather than taking responsibility and saying right I need to change my diet and start walking rather than getting in the car

[newstreetbridge]

In the past few days, I’ve watched two separate neighbours get their breakfast delivered by Just Eat type service. Both were midweek, not a Sunday treat for example. The ability to order junk food to our door any waking moment is not helping at all. After the mp who made comments about peoples inability to manage cooking fresh food from scratch and often on a budget, I really paid attention to the cost and time I took to prepare home made burgers and jacket potatoes with a lovely filling for the beach. The total cost was around £7 and there was enough to feed 5 people with amazing feedback. This was most significant from moody unadventurous (with food at least) teenagers who commented how much better than McDonalds or any takeaway it all was.

[alanwisdom]

By stopping eating junk food, soda, fruits juices, processed foods, and come back to NORMAL food made with raw ingredients.

The responsibility of fast food companies and food manufacturers is enormous in the global obesity crisis. Of course there is also everyone's responsibility, no one is forced to eat these products that are very harmful to health

[toto]

"Your genes may load the gun but it's your diet/lifestyle that pulls the trigger"

[ruthbashford]

A friend of mine from Thailand came to see me recently and was shocked at the size of people here in the UK. I said it was due to all the processed and fast food we have in this country.