British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to fight Covid-19 with anti-obesity campaign. He thinks that this strategy will not only help the country fight the pandemic, but it will also make Britain healthier.
Britain has launched the campaign encouraging people to lose weight to help tackle the worst effects of COVID-19, after several reports confirmed that chronic obesity can increase the severity of the virus in some patients.
To set an example, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, himself lost weight since his own hospitalisation after testing positive for the deadly coronavirus earlier this year.
“Losing weight is hard but with some small changes we can all feel fitter and healthier,” said Johnson.
However, health experts and campaigners are now worried about the adverse effects of Johnson’s government Better Health strategy on people living with eating disorders.
According the OECD data, Britain has one of the highest rates of obesity worldwide, with nearly one in three adults classed as obese.
In England, 11,117 hospital admissions were attributed to obesity in the year 2018-2019. That data is particularly worrying for officials in light of the pandemic.
According to CDC , people of any age with the following conditions are at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19:
- Cancer
- Chronic kidney disease
- COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
- Immunocompromised state (weakened immune system) from solid organ transplant
- Obesity (body mass index [BMI] of 30 or higher)
- Serious heart conditions, such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathies
- Sickle cell disease
- Type 2 diabetes mellitus
Study done by Public Health England also revealed that being obese or heavily overweight increases the risk of death from Covid-19.
Under the Better Health campaign, a ban on junk food advertisements has been imposed before 9PM. A tool has been developed that will guide people how to lose weight. There is also a proposal which will make it mandatory for restaurants in Britain to show how many calories their dishes contain.
The government hopes its campaign will encourage those who are overweight to lose around 2.5kg [5.5 pounds], claiming such an outcome would deliver £105 million [$135m] in NHS savings over the next five years.
But the new strategy has caused disquiet among campaigners and people recovering from eating disorders.
People suffering from this condition have told CNN that they are very obsessive over calories counting, and the latest strategy wll force them to eat less the day before.
A survey done by Beat, found that more than one million Britishers have an eating disorder. Eating disorders are a massive problem in this country, and making restaurants disclose the calorie continent of a meal — that could be very damaging for people in recovery”, Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who is the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eating Disorders, told CNN.
According to NIH, eating disorders are actually serious and often fatal illnesses that are associated with severe disturbances in people’s eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions. Preoccupation with food, body weight, and shape may also signal an eating disorder. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder.