A weighty issue

According to health experts, obesity is on the rise worldwide and is projected to spike even more by 2025 if current consumption patterns continue.

According to a recent article published in the British medical journal “The Lancet”, one in five adults worldwide will suffer from obesity by 2025 if current trends continue unabated.

Obesity has indeed risen from 105 million people in 1975 to 641 million in 2014, according to the same source, in no small measure thanks to the fast food that has spread like wildfire not only in the developed world but also in developing countries.

The fast food phenomenon, it is said, is to be blamed for the dramatic increase in obesity rates across the globe.

Apart from the aesthetic aspect, obesity poses a serious threat to health, responsible, among others, for high blood pressure and diabetes.

A medical professor at the Imperial College in the UK pointed out that “the number of people across the globe whose weight poses a serious threat to their health is greater than ever”.

Severe obesity is too expensive to be tackled with medication such as blood pressure lowering drugs or diabetes pills, the same expert said, which only highlights the cost obesity levies on a country.

What is being suggested by health officials is for nations to start promoting without delay “smart food” practices to slow down expanding waistlines.

Among proposals is the adoption of a new food-pricing policy that would make healthy food cheaper and unhealthy food more expensive, and charging higher prices for sugar and highly processed food items.

Despite the medical evidence that warrants urgent intervention, there is hardly a concerted effort in the country to raise awareness to the danger posed by obesity, and even less against fast food and sugary products, which have been the main items that contributed to growing obesity levels over the past quarter of a century.

Jordanians’ eating habits are not the healthiest. Some food items may be enticing, but there needs to be awareness of the danger posed by their excessive consumption.

Health authorities, in the first place, but also schools and religious figures have an obligation to make people aware of health issues that could pose a danger to their health or lives.