One of the greatest achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.
The Screwtape Letters – C. S. Lewis (1942)
Gluttony has over time become one of the sins that is mostly overlooked however, it was taken very seriously and reference prolifically throughout the bible. Proverbs 23:2 goes as far as to advocate that one should, ‘Put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony’ and goes on to forewarn, ‘Do not join those that drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags’ (Proverbs 23-20:21).
The Key findings within the NHS Statistics on Obesity, Activity and Diet report (2017) undertaken in 2015/16 are as follows:
- 58% of women and 68% of men were overweight or obese.
- 1 in 5 reception age children and over 1 in 3 year 6’s were measured as overweight.
- 525 thousand admissions in NHS hospitals recorded obesity as a factor.
- 6,438 had bariatric surgery following a primary diagnosis of obesity in NHS hospitals.
- Over ¾’s of bariatric surgery patients aged between 35-54, with ¾’s female.
- Only 26% of adults ate the recommended 5 or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day in 2015. Women (27%) were more likely to do so than men (24%).
- 26% of adults classified as inactive (fewer than 30 mins physical activity per week)