Obesity 'bigger killer' than smoking in England and Scotland

Obesity is now a bigger cause of deaths in Scotland and England than smoking, according to a new study.

University of Glasgow researchers looked at health surveys of nearly 200,000 adults.

The team found that between 2003 and 2017 deaths from smoking decreased from 23.1% to 19.4%.

In the same period, deaths attributed to obesity and excess body fat increased from 17.9% to 23.1% - with the overtake occurring in 2014.

Scotland's smoking ban in enclosed public spaces was introduced on 26 March 2006. A ban on smoking in cars where children were present and a ban on smoking in prisons followed.

The measures resulted in a drop in smoking-related health issues.

The latest research on obesity was published in the BMC Public Health journal.

'Smoking has fallen'

Jill Pell, one of the authors of the study, said: "For several decades smoking has been a major target of public health interventions as it is a leading cause of avoidable deaths.

"As a result, the prevalence of smoking has fallen in the UK. At the same time the prevalence of obesity has increased.

"The increase in estimated deaths due to obesity and excess body fat is likely to be due to their contributions to cancer and cardiovascular disease."

Obesity and being overweight can lead to increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, some types of cancer, such as breast cancer and bowel cancer, and strokes.

The study analysed data collected as part of the health survey in England and Scotland. The respondents were 50 years old on average.

Researchers found obesity was likely to cause more deaths in older adults

Researchers found that while obesity was likely to cause more deaths in older adults, smoking was still more likely to contribute to deaths in younger people.

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In the 16-44 age group, smoking was 2.4% more likely to have contributed to deaths than obesity.

Researchers also found that there was a gender division in the statistics.

Obesity and excess body fat was likely to have accounted for 5.2% more deaths than smoking in men, compared to 2.2% more deaths in women, according to 2017 data.

Prof Pell told BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme that there was a "long gap" between society knowing that smoking killed people and authorities taking it seriously enough to tackle it in an effective way.

She said we could not afford to leave that same gap with obesity.

'Unhealthy choices'

She said: "It is very similar to smoking in that you can't just rely on one intervention and you can't rely on leaving it to the individual. It is not enough to tell people that it's bad for them to be overweight and expect them to do it all themselves.

"Because if we live in an environment that makes it easy to make unhealthy choices and very hard to make healthy choices, then it is very difficult for people to do what they want to do in terms of lose weight.

"We have to tackle society as a whole and make it easier for people to walk and cycle to work, make it easy for young kids to get into parks and run around and play, make sure that in schools, shops and restaurants, people are being offered affordable healthy food and that food is properly labelled to let people make informed choices."

Jess Kuehne, of the Centre for Ageing Better, said: "The discussion around obesity often focuses on children but, as these figures confirm, obesity is a major concern for people in later stages of life.

"With more of us living longer but increasingly in much poorer health, it is time we turned our focus to tackling obesity at every stage of life - including older ages."