Canada is sixth fattest country

Victoria Alarcon
Sports & Health Editor

Walking through the Student Centre, the unmistakable smell of KFC and french fries can get many students lining up at the cash register. Though they don’t know it, students should worry about their health more than ever. The latest figures on Canada’s obesity rates indicate a significant rise, putting Canada in sixth for the highest obesity rates out of 33 countries.
The figures, released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), place Canada right between the United Kingdom and Ireland. One out of four Canadians are obese, and a full one-third of the population is overweight.
“It’s very discouraging,” remarked York assistant professor Anthony Scime of the school of kinesiology and health science. “Obesity is associated with a slew of health-related complications from psychosocial issues all the way to Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and various cancers.”
Mexico sits at the top of the list at 30 percent, just two percent ahead of the United States, whose rate is expected to rise by 2020. Canada’s future is very much on the same track; according to the OECD, obesity rates all over the world have been rising for the past three decades. Though York students recognize what obesity is and its harms, Scime thinks obesity rates are high in Canada because the country does not practice a healthy lifestyle.
“We’ve adapted the North American culture,” said Scime. “First of all, many Canadians do not exercise for whatever reasons. We have a sedentary lifestyle of computer games and television. You couple that with bad food, which is relatively inexpensive, and expensive good food that people do not want to put the time in preparing properly, and you will get people eating processed foods and eating junk.”
When it comes to changing the pattern, York faculty of health associate professor Michael Connor offers a simple fix: exercise and maintain a healthy diet. However, not many Canadians go out of their way to do so. Connor has heard every excuse in the book when it comes to not exercising. The front-runner tends to be “not enough time,” to which Connor often replies, “If you have an hour between class, you have time. If you’re just sitting there waiting, you have time. People have at least 40 minutes to spare every day, they just usually choose not to do anything.”
Connor recommends, at bare minimum, 20 minutes of heart rate raising exercise a day, three to five times a week. For those who can’t go to the gym, making decisions as simple as biking or walking to school can make a huge difference in keeping your body fit.
A healthy diet – like the one outlined by the Canadian food guide, with five to 12 servings of grain products and five to 10 servings of vegetables and fruit daily – also helps. Connor notes that lowering your meat intake makes a huge difference, as does subtracting all of those extra ingredients.
“Many will have a salad and then throw on a lot of dressing and bacon bits, making the healthy choice less healthy,” observed Connor. “Eat simple carbohydrates to keep lowering your diet, and add multi-grains to your diet as well.”
However, in order for obesity rates to lower dramatically, Connor explains that government involvement must grow. As processed and packaged foods become cheaper and healthier foods remain expensive, the public has no incentive to change their dietary choices. The cost of a gym membership for the average citizen often goes well above an affordable amount, too. “You’re looking at $100 a month, and people just can’t afford that,” said Connor.
Canadians could save thousands of dollars in the long run if the government invested in preventing, rather than treating, obesity. Connor acknowledges that the big reason no one wants to change things is because results will not come instantly. “If you were to implement a policy right now, you won’t see any effects for 15 to 20 years. No one wants to be the person that changes [the policy] and then has nothing to show for it until 15 to 20 years later.”
Scime also hopes that the government will, at the very least, create some sort of motivation to stop buying harmful food. “We’ve got it all backwards,” said Scime. “What the government should be doing is taxing the bad food.”