Although obesity is not listed as disorder obesity is defined as having a body weight in excess of 20% above the average for ones height.
Consequences - physically obese people are more likely to suffer from a range of weight induced illnesses, including heart attacks and diabetes. Psychologically, there are many negative affects (e.g. self esteem) as a result of societal reaction and prejudice, especially for overweight children. The community may suffer if a large amount of over weight people need NHS treatment such as heart operations as this costs so much money there is a lot less funds for other needs and this causes long weighting lists.
The factors that could affect choice of food
What we eat, how much we eat, and where we eat are linked with many of the following
- Rewards
- Punishment
- Celebrations
- Social occasions
- Culture and religion
- Public information and knowledge
- Education
- Income
- Certain activities - include watching TV, driving a car
- Feeling of pleasure self indulgence
- Being concerned with ones image, how you look
- Being concerned about having control over ones life, via your body
Income, lifestyle and diet
A person’s income may affect what they eat as they may not be able to afford to eat every day or have a healthy diet that contains all of the dietary guidelines such as eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables the effects of this may be malnutrition, low immune system or obesity. A persons lifestyle may affect there diet as they could have a very demanding or busy job work long or anti social shifts and may not have time every day to cook themselves a meal they may be to tired or if they live alone feel there is no point cooking for one person. These types of people may suffer from a range of conditions such as low immune system, obesity, and malnutrition. People with a very busy lifestyle may eat a lot of fast foods and TV dinners there is a higher chance of food contamination and food poisoning.
Cultural and religious beliefs and customs
These can play a very important part in peoples lives and in some cases influence what they choose to eat. Some festive occasions are not based on religious laws, but have ritual importance and food has an important part to plat for example the New Year, Halloween and bonfire night. Certain religions have special laws or instructions about the way that food is prepared and about what should and should not be eaten. Many religious beliefs are associated with food some of which are Jewish, Moslem, Hindu and Christian belief.
Jewish culture – foods fulfilling the requirements of Jewish law are called kosher foods. Only meat from cud-chewing, clove-footed animals may be eaten e.g. lamb, venison and beef and clean birds (birds of pray and scavenger birds may not be eaten). Forbidden foods in the Jewish culture also include pig meat of any kind, eggs with blood spots, gelatine, shellfish, and eels. Certain foods should not be prepared and eaten together such as milk and meat.
Muslim culture – forbidden food, many Muslims follow similar food laws as those practiced in the Jewish culture e.g. they do not eat pig.
Food allowed to eat, animals killed during ritual slaughter are allowed to be eaten a certain amount of fish is eaten by some Muslims.
Hindu culture – forbidden foods, any meat from cows and pigs, which are considered as unclean.
Food allowed to eat, non-meat products from cows no meat from an animal killed by ritual slaughter.
Christian culture – Christmas Easter and harvest festival are important festive seasons and traditional food is prepared and eaten at such times. Certain foods used to be restricted on certain days and fish replaced meat on Friday, some people still continue this practice. Many practicing Christians also give up certain foods during Lent. Many non-practicing Christians also take part in the above celebrations
Public knowledge and education
Public information in 1992 nutritional research in Northern
Ireland indicated a high public awareness and acceptance of the links between dietary patterns and heart disease, body weight and consumption. However public awareness of the link between diet and cancer was much lower half of those questioned did not no or believe in the link between diet and cancer.
Research in Northern Ireland in 1992 indicated that public awareness of the four healthy eating messages - to eat more fibre, less fat, sugar and salt was high. Over 90% of those surveyed recognised the message after prompting. Despite the high awareness of the healthy eating messages, public understanding of these messages was showen as much lower in the shopping basket.
Dietary guidelines and recommendations.
The general aim of these guidelines and reports is to offer advice that if followed would be expected to reduce mortality. Some of these reports have focused on one aspect such as diet and coronary heart disease (CHD) and diet and cancer prevention.
The link between diet and disease is well recognized, within the UK 5 important reports have been published.
- A discussion paper in proposals foe nutritional guidelines for health education.
National advisory committee on nutritional education (nace) 1988
- Diet and cardiovascular disease
Committee on medical aspect of food policy (coma) 1984
- Dietary sugars for human disease
Coma 1989
- Dietary references values for food energy and nutrients for the UK
Coma 1991
- Nutritional aspect of cardiovascular disease
Coma 1994
All of these reports gave out the same message eat less salt, sugar, fat and eat more fibre. This message applied to children over the age of 5 years, adolescents and adults.
How to eat less fat
- Eat less fried foods including chips
- Eat fewer cakes, puddings and sweets
- Eat fewer high fat meat products including sausage rolls and pies
- Use lower fat dairy products such as semi/skimmed milk lower fat cheese yogurt
- Use less butter margarine
How to eat less salt
- Use a little salt during cooking, but don’t add to the table
- Try using herbs and spices, onion, lemon, mustard, vinegar or pepper instead of salt
- Use fewer packets or tinned foods which have added salt
- When buying tinned vegetables buy the variety with no added salt
- Choose unsalted nuts or savoury snacks
How to eat less sugar
- Don’t add sugar to drinks or cereal
- Eat plain breakfast cereals not the sugar coated type
- Eat fewer cakes, buns, sweets, chocolate and pastries
- Drink low calorie or diet drinks, tap or bottled water instead of sugary drinks
- Use les jam and marmalade
How to eat more fibre
Eat more fruit and vegetables
Eat more pulses – peas, beans and lentils
Eat more brown bread and rice instead of the white varieties
- Choose whole grain breakfast cereal, e.g. weetabix, bran flakes, shredded wheat
The balance of good health
The balance of good health can help people understand and enjoy healthy living. It shows the types and proportions of food recommendations for a well-balanced and healthy diet. The different areas occupied by each of the different food groups show this. It’s not necessary to achieve the balance shown at every meal, or even every day, although this would helps to ensure that the overall diet is well balanced. It is important to choose a variety of foods from the first four groups every day in order to get the wide range of nutrients the body needs to remain healthy and function properly. Choosing different foods from within each group adds to the range of nutrients consumed.
Foods in the fifth group are fatty and sugary foods which are not essential to a healthy diet but add extra choice and enjoyment. We should try not to eat these foods to often, and only in small amounts when we do eat them.
Bibliography
Nutritional fact file health promotion agency Northern Ireland 1997
Diet in the classroom k mcCrum heighnman 1994
Internet sights
www. Weight watchers.co.uk/
Introduction
Diet contains a wide variety of foods each containing a percentage of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, protein and fats. There have been a lot of recent reports in the past 15 years released to the public giving different guidelines on diet and disease and how many portions of different foods to eat a day e.g. 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day diet affects cultural and religious groups in different ways as there strict beliefs affect what they can and cannot eat in every day life. Food can be contaminated by bacteria and can be very dangerous to the health of whoever consumes it because of this the government has set out strict legislation of food preperation.
