Is the Economic Crisis Making Europe Fat? - NYTimes.com

The eurozone fell back into recession, it was officially announced on Thursday, prompting renewed concerns about the economic health of the Continent. But amid the flurry of questions over sovereign debt, banking oversight and fiscal responsibility, another kind of austerity is taking hold in European households ? the nutritional kind.

From Britain to France to Portugal, fruit and vegetable consumption is declining, even as prices continue to rise, and households across Europe are starting to make more food choices based less on quality and more on price.

Fiscal austerity?s figurative belt-tightening is causing concern about the actual physical health of Europeans. A report by the European Medical Institute of Obesity found a link among Spanish women between unemployment, ?emotional eating? and an increase in obesity. ?In general, women are more prone to suffer from depression and anxiety, and the current crisis situation, which ? for many ? has led to a loss of income and resources, is greatly affecting how and what they are eating,? nutrition expert Elisabeth Gonzalez told Spanish news agency EFE.

Obesity has been on the rise in Europe for about two decades, but the pace appears to be picking up in tandem with the economic crisis, as job-seekers retreat into bad habits to ease their anxiety. Over half of Europeans are considered overweight now, and roughly 17 percent are considered obese.

In Italy, where the recession is a year-old, Italians are recycling leftover food like pasta, bread and vegetables into new dishedto make ends meet. One in three Italian households has cut food spending, both in terms of quantity and/or quality, opting for processed food instead of fresh fruits and vegetables. And in Greece, the most crisis-affected of European nations, the government last month asked retailers to discount non-perishable food items that have passed their sell-by dates.

A recent report by Safefood found that ten percent of people in Ireland were too poor to afford a regular balanced diet, a situation that is bound to worsen in the recession. ?The unemployed, low-paid workers, people who are ill, disabled or poorly educated, families with more than three children and lone parents are most at risk,? reported the Irish Examiner last month.

Across Portugal, supermarkets and hypermarkets, with their inexpensive packaged goods and bulk items, continued to gain ground. ?Portuguese consumers became more price conscious and prioritized value for money over value-added references in the short term,? said one report from Euro Monitor.

Europe is discovering what many in the United States have known for a long time: when times are tough one of the first things to go out the window is health and nutrition. Low-income Americans know this better than most, which helps account for the disproportionate levels of obesity among the poor in the United States, many of whom make McDonald?s and other fast food chains a staple of their diet.

In difficult economic times, experts say governments should do more to ensure that health care ? in particular, preventative care that focuses on things like nutrition, diet and exercise ? be maintained and even strengthened. That?s according to research recently published in the respected medical journal The Lancet.

Instead, the opposite is happening.

According to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report published earlier this month, health care spending fell across Europe in 2010, the last year for which figures were publicly available, as countries cut spending. This is in marked contrast to spending levels seen before the crisis hit. From 2000 to 2009, per capita health spending across Europe increased annually at an average of 4.6 percent of GDP, while in 2010 it dropped by 0.6 percent of GDP.

Louisa Bojesen, the co-anchor of CNBC?s European Closing Bell, recently pondered whether it made more financial sense to invest in obesity-related stocks or broader European equities:

If I were forced to invest all my money in the current climate, would I feel more confident about investing in the obesity trend ? exposure to insulin makers, hip and knee replacement equipment, food trends, fitness and so on, or investing in European equity markets? I decided that the answer would have to be the obesity trend. Do I feel confident that more people will fall into the obese category and live unhealthier lives over the next decade? Yes. Do I think that the European equity market recovery will continue? I have absolutely no idea.

As obesity worsens due to rising food prices and poor food choices, and interest in country-wide and eurozone-wide regulations that help keep people healthy decrease, there?s likely to be an increase in Europe of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, asthma, arthritis and cancer.

?If the report does not yet show any worsening health outcomes due to the crisis,? said Yves Leterme, the OECD?s secretary general, ?there is no cause for complacency ? it takes time for poor social conditions or poor quality care to take its toll from people?s health.?

So European leaders have more than just the region?s economic health to worry about.

Source: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/is-the-economic-crisis-making-europeans-fat/

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