obesity

Almost all products on special offer in Dutch supermarkets are unhealthy for the consumer or fall outside the recommended guideline for healthy eating by the Dutch Nutrition Center, supermarket comparator Stichting Questionmark found in a study, the Volkskrant reports.

The number of Dutch adults who smoke and drink are slowly decreasing, but the number of overweight people in the Netherlands is still stable, according to the Health Survey and Lifestyle Monitor for 2018 by Statistics Netherlands and public health service RIVM. Last year 50 percent of Dutch were overweight, 22.4 percent smoked at least sometimes, and 9 percent were heavy drinkers, NU.nl reports.

Childhood obesity is continuing its steady increase in the Netherlands. Last year 13.4 percent of kids between the ages of 4 and 20 years were overweight, an 10 percent increase compared to 2015, AD reports based on figures from Statistics Netherlands.

The Netherlands is one of the EU countries with the fewest residents that have weight problems, with 13.3 percent of its residents being obese. Only Romania and Italy have fewer obese residents - 9.4 percent and 10.7 percent respectively, according to figures from the EU’s statistics office Eurostat.

Eurostat worked with figures from 2014. Ireland is not included in the study as the country’s figures were not available.

On average overweight people reach about the same age as people with a healthy weight, according to a study done by researchers from Erasmus MC in Rotterdam along with doctors from America

The lower a person's education level, the more likely it is that he has weight problems, according to figures from the Lifestyle Monitor 2015. A massive 65 percent of adults with only a primary school education are overweight and 25 percent are obese, compared to 35 percent overweight and 6 percent obese among those with a high level of education.

Online games advertising food make children eat more, according to a study done by Frans Folkvord, a behavioral scientist at Radboud University. Kids who played an online game with food advertisement hidden in it ate 55 percent more of the offered sweets than the kids who played games advertising toys.

The city of Amsterdam has teamed up with a number of professionals, including pediatricians, doctors and health insurers, to get the 2,300 morbidly obese children in the city to a healthy weight. The goal for this cooperation is to reduce obesity through more efficient and more organized cooperation, the municipality announced in a press release on Thursday.

The Dutch duo of Boris and Sasha wanted to find out what the effects would be on the body if they gave up eating foods with added sugar and unnatural E numbers, as well as alcohol, for an entire month. The duo was motivated by the figures that indicate that more than the Dutch population suffers from obesity.

Exposure to hormone disrupting substances, which can be found in everyday products such as pesticides, plastic packaging, BPA or canned goods, annually costs Dutch society 5.8 billion euros.

Syringes of the frequently used Terumo brand could contain epoxy resin, which could unintentionally leak into a patients bloodstream, current affairs program Dossier EenVandaag revealed last night. Based on this information the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) launched an investigation and advised against the use of Terumo syringes.