Alarming Statistics: Over Half of Israelis Suffer from Obesity

Today, Ministry of Health representatives will attend the Health Committee in the Knesset for a first discussion on future steps to label harmful food products. A concerning statistic they hold is that more than half of Israelis are overweight, with a rate of 52.7% among women and 62% among men.

The new data refers to the year 2016 and was collected by the "National Program for Quality Indices in Community Medicine" and the School of Public Health at the Hebrew University and Hadassah. According to the data, the number of adults age 18 and older with diabetes in Israel is 499,937, meaning about half a million Israelis. This constitutes 9.73% of the adult population.

In an examination conducted according to socioeconomic status, it was found that 31.4% of women suffer from obesity in the lower deciles, compared to 14% in the higher ones. For men, 25% in the lower deciles compared to 16% in the higher ones.

According to Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, Chairman of the Association of Public Health Physicians in Israel and the Coalition for Sustainable Nutrition, with the Ministry of Health's estimate, reducing consumption of sugar, sodium, and fat could prevent 220 deaths annually and save about 600 million shekels per year.

According to the association's doctors: "Harmful food is accessible, available, and cheap, severely impacting poor populations. The consumption of harmful food is aggressively promoted by an industry acting greedily to increase its profits at the expense of public health and interest."

They added: "This is more than a real threat to public health - harmful food undoubtedly causes illness and premature death for many Israelis. Effective steps, including nutritional labeling, are urgently required to protect public health, especially that of children. Unfortunately, due to the pressure of the food industry, the planned nutritional labeling regulations have been stripped of their core, leaving a 'shell' that cannot achieve the vital goal of protecting public health."

Prof. Itamar Raz, Chairman of the National Diabetes Council, said: "The erosion of the obligation to label food is a worrying phenomenon. Food companies are very interested in delaying and diluting the reform, concerned it will impact the sales of some food products domestically. Thus, we see more and more reports of exemptions granted to food companies from labeling in red and green. Conversely, the general public has an interest in labeling as a tool for understanding in front of the supermarket shelf. True, labeling alone will not suffice to influence the long-term consumption of unhealthy food, but it is an essential step to reducing the obesity and diabetes epidemics in Israel."

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman also responded to the data, saying: "The figures are very concerning and require the implementation of the food labeling reform, which the Ministry of Health is leading impartially for the benefit of the public. I expect the Knesset to approve the regulations quickly, as we face a diabetes epidemic that affects the health of us all."