Bahama Pundit

Tackling Obesity in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

There is a move afoot to make welfare in the Bahamas conditional on taking steps to reduce obesity, eat better, get regular health checkups, and improve education results. You may not think that is terribly important in the overall scheme of things, but you would be dead wrong.

The statistics are telling. Eleven per cent of Bahamian pre-schoolers are overweight or obese, together with almost 10 per cent of Grade 1 students, 18 per cent of Grade 6 students, and a quarter of Grade 10 students. In fact, surveys show that 70 per cent of Bahamians between the ages of 21 and 60 are overweight or obese.

As a direct result, chronic non-communicable diseases account for three quarters of all deaths in The Bahamas these days. The biggest contributors (40 per cent) are heart disease and diabetes. And obesity has also been also linked to psychosocial disorders and poor education results.

Education outcomes are closely connected to poverty in the Bahamas. While most youngsters eventually reach grade 12, about half of all public students leave school every year with only an attendance certificate. And one of the consequences of that is 30 per cent youth unemployment. It is also true that poorer and less educated folks are also more likely to be obese.

Conditional cash transfers - as they are known in the trade - are an attempt to break this vicious circle. 

Why We Overeat and How to End it

by Larry Smith

As Chrissy Love said recently on the ZNS call-in show Immediate Response, "Chile I been on more diet than Oprah".

Her point was that diets don't work - at least not in the long-term. As we all know, it's hard to stick to any diet, and sooner or later we give up and rejoin the world of uncontrolled eating, usually gaining back the few pounds we lost plus a little more.

Most of us simply shrug our shoulders and move on. But a groundbreaking new book by the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration reveals that food is now a top public health issue, and he tries to explain how we can scientifically address our compulsive urge to overeat.

The unfortunate fact is, says Dr David Kessler in The End of Overeating, that we have all become addicts - hooked by overstimulated brain chemicals on huge portions of food layered and loaded with sugar, fat and salt, and offering little or no nutritional value.