Grandstand. Each year in France, 180,000 people die of obesity, more than the number of cancer victims. Beyond the multiple cardiovascular complications linked to this disease, the Covid-19 crisis has revealed the danger represented by suffering from obesity in the face of SARS-CoV-2, with a risk twice as high of hospitalization or death, whereas, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), we enter “the era of pandemics”with the increasing emergence of animal viruses.
Obesity affects 8.5 million people, or 17% of the French population, compared to only 8.5% of the population in 1997. The prevalence of obesity has doubled in twenty-five years. In June 2021, for the first time, figures on childhood obesity were published: 18% of children aged 2 to 7 and 6% of those aged 8 to 17 are obese. These figures are all the more worrying in that we have seen the appearance of obesity in children under 5, which was not observed twenty or thirty years ago.
The UN has taken up the Millennium Development Goals, in particular halting the progression of obesity and diabetes by 2030, and yet the WHO announces that within fifteen years, 28% of women and 24% of men could suffer from overweight and obesity in France, ie a quarter of the population, with a prevalence twice as high among the most modest socio-professional categories.
The environmental aspect
If industrial food, too fatty, too sweet, is a well identified factor, physical inactivity, stress, sleep disorders, life accidents, repeated diets and the quality of the intestinal microbiota also play a role in the development. of obesity.
In addition, it is now scientifically established that chemical pollutants are involved in the development of this chronic disease, these obesogenic substances can even interfere with the offspring of individuals over several generations. Also, this epidemic cannot be attributed to the sole responsibility of individuals, the presence of these various factors being largely a matter of political choices.
However, obesity is only a matter for the national health nutrition program (PNNS), whose sole objectives “eat, move” deal only with the behavioral aspect without considering the environmental aspect. This message is awkward and stigmatizing for obese people, leading the general public to believe that if the behavior of these people improved, they would no longer be sick. You can’t say that a 5-year-old child doesn’t exert himself! To base the fight against obesity on the sole responsibility of individuals is nonsense.
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