According to a recent study by Public Health England the factors most correlated with ill health and early death in the UK are as follows:
- 10.8 % - poor diet
- 10.7% - tobacco smoke
- 9.5% - being overweight or obese
- 7.9% - high blood pressure
- 5% - alcohol and drug use.
What this means is that the main causes of early death are now pretty much entirely 'lifestyle choices' and entirely preventable. As the above study says, this means that the UK now has the potential to be the 'lowest disease burden' country on earth. In fact, if you just look at the South East of the UK (where most of the wealth is), then that region is pretty much the healthiest on the planet.
The problem is that once you factor in the rest of the UK, with all of the more deprived regions, the health of the nation looks a lot worse, because most of those obese, crisp munching smoking alcoholics, they ain't in the SE, they're up North and over West!
As a result, there is a massive 'life expectancy gap' in the UK - men in the wealthiest parts live on average 8 years longer than those in the poorest areas.
The research also revealed that while UK life expectancy has increased faster than the rest of Europe, healthy life expectancy hasn't. This means that as a nation we're living longer, but spending those extra years in ill-health, which hardly seems like progress!
Can England improve its health just by 'Public Health Campaigns'?
I'm expecting a lot of these in the coming years. Anti obesity efforts are already in place in schools, but I'm expecting a bigger push, given the enormous burden placed on the NHS by preventable ill-health.
HOWEVER, a better solution might be to sort out the problem of inequality, and to eradicate the kind of deprivation and marginalization that induces people to eat crap food and smoke and drink?
Of course, that's a difficult goal to achieve, and a very long term one, and also highly unlikely in the context of dogmatic neoliberalism. So it looks like we've got a future of poor people being patronized by middle class well-being campaigns, inducing them to 'sort themselves out'!
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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://revisesociology.co.uk/poor-diet-is-now-the-number-one-killer-in-england/
That is mostly likely all (mostly) present in one half of the population. It is going to effect mental health, cognitive ability and emotional stability. THe future is not bright for many yet, feeding your kids shit is not classed as child abuse.
The Marmot Report sets out the structural inequalities that lead to poor health in England and the political, economic and social changes that are needed to address them. Framing poor diet as child abuse wouldn't tackle the underlying inequalities and victimises people who are already subject to huge injustice and unfairness. Marmot makes interesting points about the relationship between positive self-esteem and good health (or just "health") and the extent to which poor and disadvantaged people are both demonised culturally and exploited commercially.
Public health is a mixed blessing. It was a great idea when it confined itself to clean water, proper sanitation and public baths. Now it engages in highly questionable activities, often manipulative, and some of them an outrageous waste of time. The health trainers programme is one dubious example: based on a discredited theoretical model and unable to produce clear evidence of outcomes either in terms of health or any other indicators, millions of pounds have been spent on this programme.
It would be interesting to know, @revisesociology, whether there is any relationship between these trends and the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which brought about a major re-structuring of health services and introduced clinical commissioning groups, many of which are facing bankruptcy, and which was an appalling political decision. Worse than the decision to hold a referendum to leave Europe? Hard to say, but both of them are distrastrous for the majority of the population.
I don't care how a government defines child abuse, I am concerned with the parents that don't recognise it as such. People should stop parenting via proxy and start actively researching for themselves.
That would be wonderful if we had a political system that supported it and an education system that enabled it. Unfortunately, our education system is about compliance rather than empowering citizens, and we have a political administration that is consistently violating the human rights of large numbers of its citizens, including 'the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions.'.
Hey, just sending my best wishes, hope you're holding up :-)
Yes, thank you :) just had a few hours break this weekend, a chance to catch up a little 😊 Hope all is well with you 😍
The problem with it is that, this is happening globally and also in places like Finland (where I am ) where there is almost zero need for it. THere is a cultural aspect to it outside of the government levels of control.
The Marmot study is a classic!
I'm not sure that behavioural health interventions work... it would be far more effective to just tackle inequality more generally I think!
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It wouldn't surprise me if that starts to happen here in the UK... closer monitoring of parenting diet habits by the state!
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This is so surprising. I wonder if its because you have national healthcare, so anything that isn't caused by choices of the person him/herself gets prevented. I know that here in the US choices made for food/alcohol consumption and level of physical activity are huge contributors to health outcomes also, as I imagine they would be anywhere, but there are still so many illnesses unrelated to this that progress that could have been nipped in the bud with earlier diagnosis. And in some parts of the world, there is so much poverty and lack of healthcare that major diseases still are rampant, and so this kills people younger than "lifestyle choices" ever could.
Actually, back when I was a kid (and my parents before me) one benefit of growing up poor was that you wound up eating a lot of home cooked meals. A lot of veggies grown in the backyard and rice and potatoes. We got to go for fast food once a week and that was a real treat. Other than that, it was all healthy food simply because that was the cheapest food. Now the "cheap processed food" industry has taken over, and even "home cooked" really means fast food these days.
A big problem is people abdicating responsibility and relying on the system for decisions and not even asking information.
People have a bizarre disconnect. They only see something as toxic or life-threatening if it kills them on the spot. And if other people do it in large numbers 'it must be safe'. And we are most of us eating a ton of poorly nourishing, highly processed food that has been sold to us with a lot of clever advertising.
However, I'm NOT for nanny state tactics for turning this around. It will turn around eventually and it is very sad that it is the poorer folks who will join the turn around late. I like the efforts of people like Jamie Oliver and Joe Wicks in the UK. They are working hard to educate and encourage people ... not to patronise them and legislate to control their behaviour.
Good comment I agree basically!
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Actually good point - the report did say this does reflect better survival rates for diseases such aas cancer.
On the poverty and diet front - it doesn't cost much to eat well you're right. I think the poor diets are more due to the poor education and low status which tend to be correlated with low income.
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I absolutely agree with your whole post but with respect, the comment from @tarazkp falls into this trap.
I detest the food fascists screaming for people to 'eat organic' and buy locally sourced food. These are the same people complaining about GM produce and preaching to people who would love to be able to eat fresh, local produce if they could afford it.
Well over 7 billion on this planet, people still starving and 'the haves' telling the haven'ts how to feed their kids.
Education and addressing inequality is definitely the key, but not at the cost of making people take some responsibility for their own actions too. A fine tightrope to walk!
I live in Finland, one of the highest educated, richest countries in the world yet, a growing obestity epidemic like everywhere else. This isn't about eating organic or the price of food, it is about feeding children out of convenience rather than their well being. The class gap I speak of isn't by country, it is observable in the same classrooms.
I think the 'tightrope' comment from @nathan007 is most appropriate....!
It's harder to eat well and encourage yr kids to do.the same.when facing adversity but obvs it's still better to do so.
I'm uncomfortable with govt programmes which try to do one wouy even recognising the role of the other!
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Yes it is. I don't put faith in a government to provide suitable guidelines as they are always tied to the revenue they require as a modifier.
All health factors can affect the rest - we are a combined physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and desiring entity.. We need to focus into all aspects and address all of them. Nutrition is absolutely a key point and having put quite a lot of time into this subject already, I am clear that there are a lot of people whose views are going to have to be released before they can heal.
The entire concept that you can just eat hedonistically and for fun (without having put a lot of time into understanding how to do that nutritiously) is destructive, yet is running many people's eating patterns. On top of that we have the 'food scientists' who are out for cash and not for health.
I'm just glad I chose to be proactive with this and not get caught up with so many others (including my former self) who pay no attention or maybe even expect someone else to solve their problems for them!
I know yr a vegan whixh in itself is a good diet starting point (obvs not if yer a junk food vegan!)...
Agree that it's only one aspect among many ans that over obsessing about health food/ making it yr entire identity is xounter productive.
Personally I just think getting a.basic diet in place is all you need!
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Yes, we are much more than food eaters! However, a large part of our ability to produce cells comes from our nutrition - so balance is needed, as always!
TBH I think I cld probably live off my green smoothie, brown rice and fruit n nuts!
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Well, these two categories can easy be merged with poor diet:
Which gives poor diet almost 30%
Yes.. very fair point.
I really need to sort mine out properly!
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By the way, i notice that steempress gave you a good vote here.. Are they still upvoting every post made via steempress?
Not every post.... I try to limit it to 2-3 a week.
It might help that my WP blog gets 500K hits a month.
(Well my .com one, not my.co.uk one which I've now switched to to save my seo).
At least that might explain it - or it might just be cos I've had some sensible interaction with them on discord or maybe they just like me?!
Either way I know Im worth it!
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Hehe, oh ok - good traffic. I don't think steempress has a way of necessarily reporting your traffic stats - or at least it shouldn't do without you knowing. They did originally pay good payouts for posts made via an install I used steempress on for a client, but then the account got blacklisted due to another wordpress plugin for youtube videos posting a high volume of posts to steem automatically. So be careful of that kind of thing.. I guess maybe everyone gets good payouts unless they trigger an anti-scam monitor.
Cheers! They did mention spamming in one of their posts recently.
They are defo on the case against abuse!
I think this sort of integrating dapp is important for steem.
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I have a plan for another one to integrate in another similar system, but it's on the backburner at the moment.. maybe soon. :)
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