Simple lifestyle changes such as exercising regularly and indulging in healthy food habits can prevent cancer. In the UK, more than 2,500 cancer cases are diagnosed every week and almost four in ten of all cancers could be avoided by switching to a cleaner lifestyle.
According to a Cancer Research UK report cited by Mail Online, of the 360,000 new cases diagnosed in 2015, about 135,500 could have been prevented. This is evidence that cancer is caused due to environmental factors and not due to any genetic factors or bad luck.
In the UK, weight-related cancer is fast catching up and it could overtake smoking as one of the top preventable causes in the next two decades. Women should be careful as obesity is a key factor in breast, womb and bowel cancers.
"Obesity is potentially the new smoking," Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, was quoted as saying by the publication. "We need to turn that tide around and we need to act quickly."
Professor Linda Bauld, Cancer Research UK's prevention expert, said it was high time obesity was treated with the same social stigma as smoking.
"We definitely need to change attitudes towards obesity," she said. "People regard being large as increasingly normal – that is a shift in cultural norms and acceptability. Awareness isn't enough – just knowing that something we might be doing or a choice we might be making is not ideal for our health, isn't necessarily enough for us to change it."
Obesity is a serious cause for concern as UK was recently declared the most obese country in western Europe.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 26.9 percent of the UK population has a body mass index of 30 and above, considered obese, in 2015.
“One could weep over the figures, the result of successive governments who have, for the last 30 years, done next to nothing to tackle obesity,” Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum, was quoted as saying by the media.
“Even today, we have only a pathetic attempt by Theresa May’s administration to get serious about reducing the numbers and avoiding an official estimate that more than 50 percent of the UK will be obese by 2050. Ten years ago, a government department report stated that the nation was sleepwalking into obesity – but no minister, either then or since, has woken up to the fact.”
