Editorial: Obesity must be tackled

Otago Professor in Human Nutrition and Medicine Jim Mann says no drug treatment will provide the answer to the related epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Photo / David White

The Bay of Plenty Times office is on a health kick with the classified department challenging the newsroom in a weight loss competition. The story may be similar across town as workers return to desks after festive gluttony has perhaps left them a couple of kilos heavier.

Although we are enjoying the competitive spirit, abstaining is not fun. For some of us who like to walk no further than Pak'n Save, neither is exercising. Yet it feels good to at least try to be healthier.

In December, we reported that one in three adults is classified as obese by the Ministry of Health. Shockingly, one in five New Zealand children is now overweight and one in 12 is obese.

Obesity brings a raft of serious health conditions, with type 2 diabetes growing at alarming rates. Ruth Keber reports on page 5 that more than 225,000 New Zealanders have type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Every day 50 more people are diagnosed with the disease.

There is a direct correlation between type 2 diabetes and being overweight, so it makes sense to tackle this disease by reducing the population's weight.

Keber reports that a new drug is being trialled in Tauranga that may hold a cure for type 2 diabetes by mimicking the effects of a gastric bypass.

Hearing about the drug gives not only hope for diabetics but made me think immediately of the weight-loss factor. Was this finally a magic pill to lose weight?

Many people seek easy answers in weight loss. It is a hard fact to swallow that a healthy weight requires a lifestyle change.

For this reason, Otago Professor in Human Nutrition and Medicine Jim Mann says no drug treatment will provide the answer to the related epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes, because it needs to be tackled by dietary changes.

Yet we are not making these changes. With all the healthy messages by the Ministry of Health and associated parties, most adults surely know this yet a third of adults chose to ignore it and become obese, and worse, one fifth of New Zealand parents are making their children overweight.

Given the direct correlation between obesity and diabetes, a drug approach is a valuable option to research until we can find a way to convince people to stop eating themselves to severe health problems and, for some, death.