About 62% of men and 55% of women in Israel aged 20-62 are overweight or obese, according to a recent report by the National Program for Quality Indicators in Community Healthcare spanning the years 2015-2019, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Other bad news is that almost one out of five Israelis smoke, and one out of 10 has diabetes.
The good news is that the percentage of Israelis getting screened for prevention or early detection of cancer is rising.
“I think that even in these hard times, we can see that our health system is one of the best in the world, and Israelis should be very proud of it,” the head of the program, Prof. Ronit Calderon-Margalit of the Hebrew University, told The Post.
The program has been evaluating the healthcare system since 2002 and has noted steady improvements. The report did not cover 2020 – an exceptionally challenging year for the healthcare system but is working on a special report on the pandemic.
“The year 2020 has been an exceptional year,” Calderon-Margalit said. “The goal of our work will not be to assess the quality of the healthcare in this case, but rather, how the virus has affected the way people utilize the health system. We expect to find that many people gave up on early detection measures. Unfortunately, the pandemic will have long-term consequences.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
You can hardly find whole grain products in most stores ‘dauhrtan’, very little respect for non-GMO and natural products without preservatives, much unfermented soy-based ingredients in packaged products, and MSG, refined and artificial sugars and artificial flavorings and colorings in many, many products. These are a harbinger for overweight issues, not to mention that vaccines programs–of all types are shown to also cause weight gain.
That’s hard to believe. A large part of the population has military training and comes out in decent shape. I noticed last time in Israel that there weren’t many fat natives
As with most countries in the world, the food portions are too big, we often rely on packaged goods which have added fats and sugars, and the type of work people do is not physically demanding.
Add a busy schedule and stressful on top of that, you have a recipe for (serious) weight gain.
Regardless of the military background, this will affect you. Very nice that you were active doing the army stuff when you were late teens and early 20’s. If you sit all day and eat too much, you’re going to gain weight.
The WHO reported in 2016 that 1.9 Billion people were overweight.
So that’s the world in general and you shouldn’t be surprised that Israel is too.