A team of researchers appear to have implied the odd suggestion that people can lose weight during a recession due to a reduction in eating and increased levels of physical activity. These controversial and dramatic findings, published online in the British Medical Journal, were based on a study in Cuba, where the population suffered food and petrol shortages following the economic crisis of the early 1990s. The issues were triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The tough times in Cuba resulted in an average of 4 to 5kg being shed by the people and subsequent rapid declines in deaths from diabetes and coronary heart disease. The scientists, who are from the University of Alcala, in Madrid, also discovered that when Cubans put the weight back on, cases of diabetes surged back and become something of a national crisis. The researchers concluded that the Cuban crisis could have lessons Britain could learn.
The authors suggested that an average weight loss of just eleven pounds across the UK could have incredible health benefits such as cutting deaths from heart disease by a third while the mortality rate of type 2 diabetes, the form of the condition related to obesity, could even be halved. The trends of whole populations in food consumption and transport policies which are linked to physical activity could reduce the risk of the two illnesses.
The authors looked at the association between population-wide body changes and the problems associated with Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, cancer and other causes in Cuba between 1980 and 2010.
The country has a long tradition of public health and cardiovascular research which has provided the data from health surveys, studies, primary care chronic disease registries and vital statistics over the last thirty years.