NHS Digital have published findings from their Health Survey for England 2017

This week the findings from NHS Digital’s Health Survey for England 2017 were published and reported on by various news outlets. Here we summarise just some of the findings:

Obesity and Diabetes

In 2017, 64% of adults were overweight or obese in England, men were more commonly overweight than women (40% vs 31%, respectively) while more women were obese than men (30% vs 27%, respectively). 12% of men and 9% of women with a very high waist circumference had either diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes.

In 2017, 30% of children aged 2-15 years old were overweight or obese (17% obese). Those children with obese parents were 3 times more likely to be obese than children with healthy weight parents.

Fruit and Vegetable intake

In 2017, only 29% of adults met the 5 a day recommendation (fewer men were meeting the recommendation than women) and only 18% 5-15 year olds consumed 5 portions of fruit and vegetables, the mean portion for children was 3.2.

Risk Factors

The following risk factors were also assessed by the survey:

• smoking cigarettes 
• drinking more than 14 units of alcohol per week
• eating less than five portions of fruit and vegetables a day
• obesity calculated by BMI
• physical inactivity

36% of adults had just 1 of the above risk factors, 32% had 2 risk factors and 19% had 3 or more of the risk factors – meaning almost 90% had at least 1 risk factor.

Having multiple risk factors was more common in men than women (54% men with 2 or more risk factors vs 47% women with 2 or more risk factors).

The most common combination of risk factors for men was found to be drinking more than 14 units of alcohol per week and low fruit and vegetable intake.

The most common combination of risk factors for women was found to be low fruit and vegetable intake and obesity.

More information on the findings published by NHS Digital can be found by following the link.