Declining life expectancy?
Posted by kathryn in Miscellanea
Over the last 150 years life expectancy has constantly been on the rise. For most people it’s a given – we eat better, are wealthier, have better health care, science has brought us more drugs and medical procedures, meaning we’ll have a longer life span than our parents and grandparents. Surely?
Well not necessarily. According to Professor Ilona Kickbusch, the rise in childhood obesity is putting this at risk. The World Health Organisation estimates there are over one billion people in the world who are overweight, and 300 million who are obese.
As Professor Kickbusch says:
“If you want to put it simplistically at this point in history we have more energy going into our bodies and less energy expended by ourselves. We go everywhere in cars, our work is sedentary a lot of our leisure activities are sedentary. In schools a lot of physical activity has been reduced in favour of certain academic principles. So what we’re seeing here is an epidemic which is an epidemic of our times.”
19 March, 2007
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