Friday 24 February 2012

Obesity in England: why is it increasing?

Obesity in England: why is it increasing?:

The number of clinically obese people in England is following a worrying trend the NHS report today. We check the latest statstics to see what this means

Get the data

26.2% of the male population in England to said to be clinically obese according to the lastest Obesity, Physical Activity and Diet report published today by the National Health Service (NHS).

That's over 26% of men in England whose body mass index is greater than 30 kg/m2, and an increase of 13 percentage points in 17 years.

Obesity has been increasing, not only for men, but for women too. Here's the data for the whole adult population of England:

We can see an 11.2 percentage point increase from 1993 to 2010.

The effects of this change are many and varied. Today the Press Association reported that weight loss operations have risen:

In 2010/11, there were 8,087 weight-loss stomach operations in England's hospitals, up from 7,214 in 2009/10, according to data from the NHS Information Centre.

The report highlights around a 30-fold increase in the number of people going under the knife in the last decade, from just 261 weight loss operations in 2000/01.

Recent figures include operations to adjust an existing gastric band rather than fit a new one. Of the 8,087 procedures in 2010/11, 1,444 were for maintenance of an existing band.

The report shows the number of hospital admissions with primary diagnosis of obesity has also risen really quite dramatically too. Here's the data:

But perhaps the most concerning part of the report is the data on children. The chart shows the percentage of children (aged between 2 and 15) who are overweight and obese:

Although there has been a decrease in overweight and obese children from 2004 levels, we can still see that the percentages are higher than in 1995. Here are some more detailed facts about boys and girls in 2010 compared to 1995:

• In 2010, 17% of boys and 15% of girls (aged 2 to 15) were classed as obese, an increase from 11% and 12% respectively since 1995.

• In 2010, around three in ten boys and girls (aged 2 to 15) were classed as either overweight or obese (31% and 29% respectively).

• In 2010/11, the around one in ten pupils in Reception class (aged 4-5 years) were classified as obese (9.4%) which compares to around a fifth of pupils in Year 6 (aged 10-11 years) (19.0%).

Are we doing enough to provide young people with good food and an active lifestyle? This data suggests the answer is no when compared to 17 years ago.

We've included in the spreadsheet of the key data sets from the Obesity, Physical Activity and Diet report. What can you do with them?

Data summary

Download the data

DATA: download the full spreadsheet

The Guardian

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