SYDNEY
- The global obesity pandemic combined with society’s anti-fat bias is more
damaging to women than to men, an expert warned at an international conference
on Wednesday.
“Being
obese and female is as bad as it gets,” Berit Heitmann, a
nutritional and medical research advisor to the Danish
government, told a meeting of world obesity experts gathered
in Sydney.
Not
only were obese women socially stigmatised more than their
male counterparts, but their health suffered to a greater
degree, delegates at the 10th International Congress on
Obesity heard.
Heitmann
said that although gender differences in the obesity
epidemic werenarrowing, the vicious circle of obesity and
poverty still had a greater impact on women.
Poverty
was well known as both a contributor to and result of
obesity, a condition that was five times more common among
poor people in the developed world, she said.
A
recent Finnish study showed that obese women faced more job
discrimination and earned less, not only compared to men,
but also to women of normal weight and obese men with a
similar education and job.
“Appearance
and size seem related to getting and keeping both job and
salary,” she said.
Prejudice
began early in life for obese females, with children as
young as three shunning their obese peers, Heitmann said.
Family,
teachers and healthcare professionals were also more biased
against obese girls and women than boys and men, she said.
“Obese
women are deprived of friendships, intimate relationships,
social interactions, education, income and respect,”
Heitmann said.
In
the realm of education, with fewer grants and scholarships
awarded to obese women, she said.
In
addition to social disadvantages, obese women suffered more
from diabetes, hypertension and heart disease than men with
the same body mass index, Heitmann said.
“The
risk of developing diabetes type two for an obese man is
about half that of an obese woman,” with similar figures
for hypertension, she said.
Paradoxically,
while obesity appeared to cause more disease in women, death
rates were similar among the sexes, she said.
Women’s
tendency to carry more fat on the backside than on the
stomach, where it was more dangerous, may explain this, she
said.
Research
dedicated to alleviating the burden of obesity on women’s
health included a study showing women could achieve weight
loss more effectively when exercise was augmented by a
higher protein diet.
Professor
Donald Layman, whose 2005 study was published by the Journal
of Nutrition, reported that higher protein diets, when
combined with exercise, meant dieters tended to lose fat
rather than muscle.
Although
Layman was invited to speak by the lobby group Meat and
Livestock Australia, Manny Oakes of CSIRO -- Australia’s
government body for scientific research -- called Layman’s
results exciting.
The
obesity conference, which is held every four years, has
drawn more than 2,000 academics and health professionals to
seek practical ways of fighting the greatest single
contributor to chronic disease worldwide.
The
World Health Organisation says more than a billion people --
nearly one in six of the world’s population -- are
overweight, outnumbering the 800 million who are
under-nourished.
AFP
