Planet earth is getting fatter and fatter. “The number of people with obesity in the world is now close to one billion”. The dietician Edoardo Mocini, specialist in food science and researcher at the Umberto I Polyclinic in Rome, starts from the constantly increasing numbers, to dispel widespread myths and beliefs on the treatment of obesity. “Tackling the issue in a stigmatizing and simplistic way, focusing only on individual causes – explains Mocini to time.news Salute on the eve of World Obesity Day – has proven to be unable to reverse the global trend or improve patient health” .
“It is rather important – he underlines – to recognize the numerous environmental causes that are not under the control of patients and to allow them to access specialist medical care, which does not consist of vague and non-specific indications on how to improve one’s diet and increase activity It is important to shift the focus away from the behavior of individuals and face obesity for what it is, as recognized by the World Health Organization and the main medical-scientific societies: a multifactorial pathology, where many elements that cause it are at the beyond the control of individuals”.
Not always, in fact, losing weight is a matter of willpower. “Offering people affected by obesity simplistic solutions such as ‘eat less and move more’ is stigmatizing, reductive,” says the expert, author of the book “Fatti your dishes” (Rizzoli) and very active on Instagram where he fights false myths of nutrition and body shape, fat phobia, culture of diet and thinness at all costs. To reverse the trend of a growing planet, “it is necessary to implement urban planning, educational and agri-food policies. It is necessary to act on environmental causes, while individual patients must be allowed to access specialized, qualified, multidisciplinary: diet therapy, psychological, pharmacological”.