2024-07-11 02:56:13
Incorrect diets and nutritional models cost each Italian approximately three hundred euros more per year and affect the probability of developing diseases, determining a double risk: in terms of impact on health and, more generally, increasing economic and social costs, causing an annual contraction of European GDP of 3.3%. The evidence of this correlation was presented today by the Aletheia Foundation – the first Italian scientific think tank – in the report ‘Diseases, food and health’, illustrated by the Scientific Committee of the Foundation, with the patronage and at the offices of the Ministry of Health, in the presence of Minister Orazio Schillaci. In 2023, excess weight, according to the report, affected 46.4% of the adult population, noting an increase in the last twenty years of 7.1% of overweight people and 36.4% of those affected by obesity. Added to this is an increase in the incidence of diabetes which goes from 6.3% in 2021 to 6.6% in 2022 with a growth of 65% in the last twenty years.
Going into detail, the increase in overweight linked to incorrect nutritional styles represents 9% of national health expenditure and costs each Italian an extra annual “tax” of 289 euros. In this sense, the Mediterranean diet, an intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO, encompasses and expresses different values to contrast this phenomenon. Enemies of health are ultra-processed foods. The report highlights, in fact, how a 20% reduction in calories consumed from foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fats could prevent 688 thousand chronic diseases in Italy by 2050 and save 278 million euros per year in health expenditure: about 7 billion in the next 25 years.
“We often witness misinformation and exploitation – explains Riccardo Fargione, Director of Aletheiache – that push towards models of consumption that are harmful to citizens. We cannot allow this in a country like Italy, but not even at a global level, for the good of citizens and our children.
And that’s why with the Aletheia Foundation we have equipped ourselves with a team of doctors and scientists of the highest profile.”
2024-07-11 02:56:13