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Majority of Britons will be obese by 2050, scientists warn
A majority of Britons will be obese by 2050 if weight gain in the population continues at the current rate, a Government report warned yesterday.
Scientists predict that in just over 40 years, 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and a quarter of all children in Britain are likely to be clinically obese.
However, the Government was yesterday accused of "moving the goalposts" on childhood obesity and appearing to back away from the problem.
A leading charity made the claim after Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo pledged to make children the starting point for an ambitious new strategy to tackle obesity in Britain.
She said that by 2020, the Government intended to reduce the proportion of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) maintained this was a "softer, more distant" target than the one originally proposed, to halve childhood obesity rates by 2010.
The chief executive of the heart charity, Peter Hollins, said: "We don't want to just aim to make inroads by 2020, as the Government suggests, but to see changes by 2010 as they originally promised."
He added: "We would like to ask the Government why it has so dramatically failed to make progress towards its original target to the extent that it feels compelled to move the goalposts in this way.
"Setting new targets for 2020 is presumably a tactic to buy the Government more time to get its act together, but it risks making the problem seem too distant to force through the necessary bold measures in this term of government.
"The Prime Minister needs to be braver than his predecessor and show the country he has the bottle to rein in the pervasive influence of the food industry over our children's eating habits."
In the past 25 years, the prevalence of obesity in the UK has more than doubled. The most recent data shows that in 2004, nearly a quarter of men and women in England were obese, as well as 10 per cent of girls and 8 per cent of boys under the age of 20.
Scientists predict that if current trends continue, by 2050 a mere 10 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women will have a "healthy" weight in relation to their height.
The consequent impact of chronic health problems on society is predicted to cost Britain well in excess of 45bn a year.
The warnings were spelled out yesterday in the latest report from the Government's Foresight think-tank, which looks at future trends.
Almost 250 experts and scientists took part in the two-year investigation which culminated in the report, Tackling Obesities: Future Choices.
The key conclusion was that human biology is simply not adapted to modern life in the 21st century, with its labour-saving devices, motorised transport, sedentary work and cheap high energy foods.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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