UK---NEWS---Award scheme to fight obesity

Dec 22 2006

Chester Chronicle

AN estimated 132,400 people in Cheshire are obese, according to a county council report. Nationally by 2010 approximately one in five children aged between two and five will be obese with more girls than boys being affected. Cheshire County Council wants to make sure that's not the case. Bosses have published a review which proposes an award scheme which recognises nurseries and pre-schools providing healthy food and promoting a healthy lifestyle. Consideration should also be given, says the review, to making the award open to child minders. Headed by Cty Cllr Chris Claxton, a team scrutinised the effectiveness of the various initiatives being undertaken on children's eating habits, particularly out of school. It took evidence from public health and children's services experts and the results and recommendations are set out in an 18-page report. Its recommendations include supporting the provision of cookery lessons in secondary schools, and the county council working with borough councils and primary care trusts to investigate ways in which children learn about food, including its origins through gardening clubs and allotments. 'This important subject is one of the biggest health issues facing us throughout our lives,' said Cllr Claxton. 'Lessons need to be learnt - and quickly - because figures are on the increase nationally and the cost is horrendous to the health service. 'Obesity costs Cheshire's health service approximately £48m a year because of associated health risks which include asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure and orthopaedic disorders. 'Annually obesity has risen by 0.7% in the county. In a doctor's practice of 10,000 patients it means that 60 new adults would be treated for obesity each year.' Other recommendations include encouraging each school to identify a governor to be responsible for healthy lifestyles throughout a school. The county's director of children's services is to be asked to hold a special conference to promote this new responsibility.

 

USA---NEWS---Employers urged to join obesity fight

Growing problem: new report wants companies to tackle overweight workers

Issue date: 28 December 2006
Source: People Management magazine

Page: 7

Obesity is "the most serious threat to the health of the nation", and employers must do more to help their staff stay fit, the government has urged.

 

A report, issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), contains guidelines for employers to change their policies and incentive schemes in order to "create a culture that supports healthy eating and physical exercise".

 

It said: "Action will have an impact not only on the health of the workforce but also in terms of savings to industry. That is why all workplaces, particularly large organisations, should address the prevention and management of obesity."

 

The report encourages employers to provide benefits packages that give access to local gyms and leisure facilities, and schemes to give regular health checks to employees. It also suggests that pricing in canteens should reflect the relative health benefits of the food.

 

As well as being aimed at employers, the guidelines are also intended for all groups who could play a part in countering the problem – healthcare providers, parents, local authorities and building planners, who have been urged to design buildings so that stairwells are more prominent than lifts.

 

Peter Littlejohns, clinical and public health director at NICE, said: "Obesity's risks are as serious as smoking and urgent action is needed to tackle the problem. For the first time we have brought together all the people who can help to solve the obesity problem – not only health professionals, but also local councils, employers and schools."

 

Ken Snider, director of the County Durham and Tees Valley Public Health Network, added: "Tackling the obesity epidemic isn't simply about treating people who are already obese – it's also about helping people to avoid becoming overweight in the first place. That's why in the guidance we have taken a dual approach that includes both prevention and treatment."

USA---NEWS---Scientists Find Link Between Obesity and Intestinal Bacteria

By David McAlary
Washington
21 December 2006
 

 

U.S. scientists have found a surprising relationship between obesity and the kind of food digesting bacteria we have in our intestines. As VOA's David McAlary reports, the findings suggest that the microbes living in our guts might influence how prone we are to being overweight and might offer new solutions to the growing obesity epidemic worldwide .

Our intestines house two main groups of beneficial bacteria that help us break down otherwise indigestible foods so we can use the energy from them.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that the relative proportion of one of these kinds of bacteria, called Bacteriodetes is lower in fat people compared with those who are lean. Stool samples showed that when obese people lost weight, the Bacteriodetes microbes in their guts increased in proportion to the other type, called Firmicutes.

They saw the same thing in mice.

"We found that the obese humans did actually have exactly the same shift in the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteriodetes that we had seen in the mice," said Ruth Ley.

That is Washington University scientist Ruth Ley speaking to Nature magazine, which has published her group's two studies on this topic.

"As they lost weight, the amount of Bacteriodetes increased and began to resemble what you would see in a normal lean person, and the amount of the increase was proportional to the amount of fat that they had actually lost over time," she said.

The researchers also wanted to know if they could make lean mice fat simply by altering the intestinal proportion of their microbes, what they call flora. Co-investigator Peter Turnbaugh told Nature they could do just that.

"What we saw was the mice that were exposed to the microbes from an obese mouse actually gained more fat over the course of the experiment than the mice that were given a lean microbial community," said Peter Turnbaugh.

Together, the findings suggest that obesity involves more than eating too much and not being very active. Another member of the research team, Jeffrey Gordon, puts it this way.

"What this study shows is that there is also a microbial component to determining how much adipose tissue you might have, and that the microbes in the gut are part of the question that affects predisposition to or the pathophysiology of obesity," he said.

In a Nature magazine commentary, Matej Bajzer and Randy Seeley at the University of Cincinnati's Genome Research Institute say this is a potentially revolutionary idea that could change our views of what causes obesity. They write that the differences in the way the body extracts calories from food may be determined by the microbes, contributing to differences in body weights.

But Ruth Ley says the biological pathways governing the intestinal bacteria are unknown.

"We know there is some sort of linkage between the fat that is carried on the body," she said. "We know that fat cells produce hormones, and there could be some signaling between the adipose tissue in the and the kinds of bugs [microbes] that are in the intestine, but at this point, we do not understand the mechanism."

The researchers say that once these mechanisms are understood, manipulating the microbes in the gut could offer another approach to treating obesity.