The global obesity pandemic combined with society’s anti-fat bias is more damaging to women than to men, an expert has warned at an international conference.
"Being obese and female is as bad as it gets," Berit Heitmann, a nutritional and medical research advisor to the Danish government, told a meeting of world obesity experts gathered in Sydney Wednesday.
Not only were obese women socially stigmatised more than their male counterparts, but their health suffered to a greater degree, delegates at the 10th International Congress on Obesity heard.
Heitmann said that although gender differences in the obesity epidemic were narrowing, the vicious circle of obesity and poverty still had a greater impact on women.
Poverty was well known as both a contributor to and result of obesity, a condition that was five times more common among poor people in the developed world, she said.
A recent Finnish study showed that obese women faced more job discrimination and earned less, not only compared to men, but also to women of normal weight and obese men with a similar education and job.
"Appearance and size seem related to getting and keeping both job and salary," she said.
Prejudice began early in life for obese females, with children as young as three shunning their obese peers, Heitmann said.
Family, teachers and healthcare professionals were also more biased against obese girls and women than boys and men, she said.
"Obese women are deprived of friendships, intimate relationships, social interactions, education, income and respect," Heitmann said.
In the realm of education, with fewer grants and scholarships awarded to obese women, she said.
In addition to social disadvantages, obese women suffered more from diabetes, hypertension and heart disease than men with the same body mass index, Heitmann said.
"The risk of developing diabetes type two for an obese man is about half that of an obese woman," with similar figures for hypertension, she said.
Paradoxically, while obesity appeared to cause more disease in women, death rates were similar among the sexes, she said.
Women’s tendency to carry more fat on the backside than on the stomach, where it was more dangerous, may explain this, she said.
Research dedicated to alleviating the burden of obesity on women’s health included a study showing women could achieve weight loss more effectively when exercise was augmented by a higher protein diet.
Professor Donald Layman, whose 2005 study was published by the Journal of Nutrition, reported that higher protein diets, when combined with exercise, meant dieters tended to lose fat rather than muscle.
Although Layman was invited to speak by the lobby group Meat and Livestock Australia, Manny Oakes of CSIRO — Australia’s government body for scientific research — called Layman’s results exciting.
The obesity conference, which is held every four years, has drawn more than 2,000 academics and health professionals to seek practical ways of fighting the greatest single contributor to chronic disease worldwide.
The World Health Organisation says more than a billion people — nearly one in six of the world’s population — are overweight, outnumbering the 800 million who are under-nourished.
