Health: Diabetes and Obesity

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness is clearly right that weight reduction can reverse diabetes. My father, for example, has lost weight and his diabetes has, effectively, been put into remission. There is no question that it works. However, it is very difficult to lose weight once you are overweight. The figure is that only one in 210 people with a BMI of over 30 can reduce it to a normal level; hence the emphasis that the Government are putting on explaining this to children and young people before they get fat. That is the critical place to aim. However, I entirely agree that greater access to structured education programmes is very important.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

I fully endorse that reply from the Minister, but will he also ensure that the guidance includes recognition of emerging research that children, if they never become obese, have a different type of fat—brown fat—which maintains a higher metabolic rate and therefore decreases their long-term risk of diabetes? The importance of avoiding obesity in the first place, particularly in children and in women, in pregnancy and post pregnancy, is the only way that we will stop this ever-growing curve of diabetes associated with adult obesity.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I entirely endorse the words of the noble Baroness, which I am sure will be reiterated in the obesity strategy when it is announced later in the summer.