How sugar bears a heavy responsibility for fuelling Britain’s epidemic of obesity

When it comes to obesity there is no shortage of shocking figures.

There’s the one from the World Health Organisation which predicts that by 2015, 2.3bn people – almost a third of the entire global population – will be overweight. There’s another from the NHS which estimates the cost of taking an obese patient to hospital can, in extreme cases, hit £100,000.

They were referring to cases like Georgina Davis, the 63st teenager who ballooned after spending four months bingeing on junk food after telling friends she had dumped her mystery boyfriend. Unable to fit through the doors of her South Wales home, earlier this year a team of 40 rescuers had to be brought in to help cut her out of her prison.

Davis, who did the usual rounds of breakfast news shows when the story of her astonishing weight gain broke, is clearly at the top end of any obesity scale, but she is not alone. On average we are three stone heavier than we were in the 1960s.

Fifty years ago, statistics for obesity didn’t even exist, but in the years that have passed we have become a nation of elasticated waistbands and XXL size charts.

Healthy eating schemes have come and gone along with school programmes to get youngsters more involved in sport and if the research which emerged out of Leeds Metropolitan University last week is right, the obesity problem is not just as bad as we imagined, in fact it is worse.

Academics at Leeds say current statistics for childhood obesity, which are based on Body Mass Index figures, may have failed to spot thousands of overweight youngsters.

Their own study, conducted over a three-year period, instead measured the waist circumference of almost 15,000 secondary school children in Leeds. The results made the research team stop in their tracks.

According to the Leeds Met figures, 1,000 girls (15 per cent of those who took part in the study) and 400 boys (six per cent of participants) were found to be obese, but would not have not registered as such on the BMI index. More worryingly still, 2,000 11-year-olds had a waist measurement above that which indicates serious risk in adult women.

Lead researcher Claire Griffiths described the figures as having “serious implications for public health” which is already groaning under the weight of obesity related problems. But how did we get to this point?

In recent years, a whole raft of explanations have been offered as to why more and more youngsters are tipping the scales, with everything from computer games to the decline of boy’s own adventures in an increasingly risk averse world being blamed for a generation that can’t see its own feet.

However, other studies – including one which has so far spanned 12 years – have debunked the couch potato theory and claim that our current woes can be traced to an increased consumption of one particular ingredient. Sugar and its artificial equivalent.

The amount of sugar we eat has reached an industrial scale and while its presence is pretty obvious in some foodstuffs, most of us are completely unaware just how much we inadvertently shovel down.

Glucose fructose syrup first arrived on the mass market in the 1970s and it now appears in everything from pizza to apparently healthy cereal. Foods branded as low fat also tend to be high in added sugars to help improve the taste.

“Stripping out fat from processed foods makes them less appealing to our taste buds,” says Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum. “The inevitable consequence is that manufacturers increase other ingredients, including sugar to recreate taste and texture.”

Current guidelines recommend no more than 50g of added sugar – the stuff used to sweeten food – a day, the equivalent of 10 cubes of sugar for adults and nine for five to 10-year-olds.

It’s perhaps no surprise that fizzy drinks, milkshakes and chocolates are packed with the stuff, but even apparently healthy options often have hidden sugars – even a plain bagel contains one cube of sugar.

The NOF has been backing a Government move to force large food firms to cut the amount of fat, salt and sugar in their products. It is hoped that by persuading the likes of Coca-Cola, Subway and Tesco to sign up to a joint pledge, others would follow suit.

“Eating and drinking too many calories is at the heart of the nation’s obesity problem,” said the health secretary Andrew Lansley when details of the Responsibility Deal was launched.

“We all have a role to play – from individuals to public, private and non-governmental organisations – if we are going to cut five billion calories from our national diet. It is an ambitious challenge but the Responsibility Deal has made a great start.

“This pledge is just the start of what must be a bigger, broader commitment from the food industry. But it is a great step in the right direction and will help millions of us eat and drink fewer calories.”

As part of the scheme, the big confectionary companies are looking at packaging information on their chocolate products, capping the number of calories in bars and reducing the calorie content of some brands by as much as 30 per cent. Despite early fears the scheme had been snubbed, the pledge has now been signed by a large number of retailers, including Sainsbury’s Kraft Foods and Morrisons.

With little to cheer about in Government, the support for the scheme was hailed as a massive step forward by Mr Lansley, but a number of campaigning groups have been left distinctly underwhelmed by the development.

“It is shameful that the Department of Health is fuelling an industry game of smoke and mirrors instead of demanding enforceable actions to reduce calorie content,” says Charlie Powell, Campaigns Director for the Children’s Food Campaign.

“Without an end to junk food marketing promotions, these token gestures become totally irrelevant. We note that the calorie reduction examples only cover small proportions of companies’ products and that big names such as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC are conspicuously missing.

“New ranges are all very well, but every food company should commit to permanently reducing calories across the all their products.”

The organisation claims the problem of foods with high sugar content begins from birth.

“The UK baby food market is worth an estimated £315m annually, and many food products marketed for babies and young children carry claims about their nutritional value,” says Powell. “To test their claims we analysed the nutritional information provided for 107 foods marketed for babies and young children available from UK supermarkets. The findings were concerning.

“Several products contained high levels of sugars and/or saturated fat, with some products containing levels of sugar or saturated fat higher than those in adult products widely considered junk food.”

Many now fear that with high sugar diets a reality virtually from birth it won’t be long before Government resources reach breaking point. Keeping big business happy may be one thing, but with last year’s NHS bill for obesity topping £500m, policymakers may soon have no option but to stem the sugar rush.

How the secret sugars stack up

When your body has all of the energy that it needs from sugar, it converts the excess into fat and stores it. That is one of the reasons why people gain weight.

Since sugar doesn’t provide anything but energy, it is often referred to as having “empty calories.” It does not contain any vitamins or minerals that your body requires.

Even though it is recommended that a female not consume more than 50g of sugar in one day, just one can of fizzy drink can have more than 35 grams of sugar.

According to latest research, the problem of obesity is deepening. If the current rate of growth continues, three quarters of the population could suffer the ill effects of excess weight within 15 years.