| Poor diets cost NHS 6 billion pounds a year: study |
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LONDON: Poor eating habits of people are incurring a cost of nearly 6 billion pounds a year on the National Health Services (NHS), which is three times as much as cost incurred by smoking.
Dr Mike Rayner of the department of public health at Oxford University said in a study done by his team that food-related health problems are responsible for about 10 per cent of morbidity and mortality in the country and costs the NHS about 6 billion pounds annually.
Processed foods preferred over fresh fruit and vegetables is leading to increased incidence of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and even food poisoning.
Rayner and another researcher Peter Scarborough worked out the proportion of ill health and deaths, known in medical parlance as disability adjusted life years, or DALYs, due to poor diets. They found that 37 per cent of DALYs can be due to food-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. These ailments accounted for 28 per cent of health care costs in 2002 -- 18 billion pounds.
Though diet cannot be the only cause for these illnesses, the researchers said it is a fact found out by studies in WHO that about a third of the diseases are related to diet.
The two researchers, whose findings are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, said smoking cost the NHS 1.5 billion pounds annually.
Rayner said the government should pay more attention to the costs of food-related ill health. Some of the measures suggested by him to improve the national diet are a tax on unhealthy foods, ban on advertisement of junk food to children and better labelling.
Anna Denny, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, said the study brought out the bad effects of improper food. More adults are obese than ever before and the World Health Organization estimates that dietary factors account for 30 per cent of cancers in industrialized countries.
A department of health spokesperson said the department is aware of the links between poor diet and ill health and the government is taking measures to discourage unhealthy eating like warnings on salt intake. Issues like labelling and advertisements on junk food are being discussed, she added.
Posted
on : Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:15 GMT | General News
By : Paula Jenkins
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