A family issue | Obesity is a complex problem with no easy answers — education starts at home
TORONTO — Obesity is a major Canadian health scourge linked to one in 10 deaths, experts said last week.
The problem has tripled over the past 20 years and affects as many as one in four Canadians.
“This is a huge, huge health problem,” Ottawa obesity specialist Dr. Robert Dent told a Conference Board of Canada food strategy conference April 9.
However, he warned against drawing simple conclusions about the cause of the epidemic, including over-eating or products produced by the food industry.
“Obesity is not rocket science,” said the medical director of Ottawa Hospital’s weight management clinic. “It is a lot harder.”
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Dent’s analysis was that some people have a genetic disposition to weight gain, which is a major factor.
Add to that a general decline in physical activity with the invention of such exercise-reducing devises as garage door openers, the television remote and computers and Canadians are not burning as many calories as they once did.
“So why aren’t we all fat?” asked Dent.
His answer was genetic predisposition.
“There is an incredible disconnect between what one eats and what one weighs,” said Dent.
Skinny people often consume more calories than overweight people and yet do not gain weight.
“Obesity is a symptom of many underlying causes,” he said. “It is not a simple disorder.”
However, Dent said the food industry is not the problem.
“We need not abuse the food industry but ask for help from it to produce and promote healthy products.”
He said the three main strategies at his clinic are weight control drugs, surgery and encouraging lifestyle changes such as changing food intake and exercise patterns.
“But short-term diets do not work,” he said. “Any treatment for weight has to be forever.”
Toronto-area hospital dietician Sue Ekserci offered a different explanation for the obesity epidemic.
She argued that the issue is often the message sent to children by parents and school.
Ekserci, who works at the women’s and children’s health program at Humber River regional hospital, said both nature and nurture are involved in the problem, but her emphasis is nurture.
When she works with overweight children, “I’m really counseling the whole family.”
She said strategies to encourage overweight children to eat healthier can be as simple as putting fruits and vegetables on kid-accessible shelves in the fridge.
Counselling also includes telling pregnant women that their child will have an elevated chance of being overweight if they gain excessive weight during pregnancy.
She said a key piece of advice to parents and schools is that messaging about healthy food and exercise should be consistent and the emphasis should not be on what not to eat.
Both speakers also shared tales about the challenges.
Ekserci said her children had a school exercise about food that required them to put an X through junk food. Then they had a snack that included potato chips.
Dent told of an attempt to make the Ottawa hospital cafeteria offer healthier fare, only to have staff line up at a recently arrived chip wagon across the street.
