MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Europeans too fat warn UN agencies

With obesity posing one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century, United Nations agencies warned Thursday that Europeans are in some ways eating worse now than 45 years ago, although agriculture and the right farm policies can promote healthy diets, such as eating more fruit and vegetables.

"The EU (European Union) diet has gradually deteriorated and has become too rich in fats, particularly saturated fats, sugar and cholesterol," UN Food and Agricultural Organization Josef Schmidhuber told representatives from member countries of the Regional Offices for Europe of the FAO and the UN World Health Organization.

The two day meeting, taking place at FAO Headquarters in Rome, aims to facilitate dialogue between agriculture and public health sectors and identify policy options such as supporting primary production, fiscal policies and marketing guidelines to help improve people's diets and combat obesity and related diseases.

"It is a sad fact that overweight and obesity affect the poorest parts of society most, and also have long-term consequences for one of its most vulnerable groups ? children," Marc Danzon, WHO Regional Director for Europe, said. "Everyone must have access to healthy food, and government policies must support both availability and access in Europe."

One positive sign is that in 2002 people in the EU were eating more fruit and vegetables, Mr. Schmidhuber said. People in Mediterranean countries generally ate healthier diets than elsewhere in Europe but there were clear signs of deterioration in the Mediterranean diet too, he added.

The prevalence of obesity has risen threefold in many European countries since the 1980s, and the numbers of those affected, particularly children, are continuing to increase at an alarming rate.

Obesity is already responsible for 2 to 8% of health care costs and 10 to 13% of deaths in different parts of Europe - more than any other region.

FAO nutritionist Guy Nantel told delegates obesity was not limited to rich, developed countries but was rapidly becoming a problem in developing nations too. This placed them under a "double burden" of under-nourishment co-existing with over-nutrition and obesity. Adoption of Western diets and increasingly sedentary lives were sending obesity rates climbing fast in developing countries, with women most affected, he said.

FAO estimates that there were 852 million undernourished people worldwide in 2000-2002 while at the same time WHO said there were 300 million obese adults and 115 million suffering from obesity-related conditions in the developing world.

Nantel cited the example of China where 23% of adults were now overweight or obese, and diet-related chronic diseases had become the leading cause of death.

Part of a solution to the problem would be for people to eat more fruit and vegetables, Eric Kueneman, Chief of the FAO service dealing with crop production, said. "FAO is actively promoting fruit and vegetable production for both health and for income-generation for producers," he noted.