Modern life is making us fat
First the good news: it's modern life that makes us fat, not innate greed. Now the bad news: there's no "silver bullet" to make us thin again, nor any master plan for turning back the tide of obesity.
That's the message from a major UK government report analysing the country's obesity problem. It warns that at current rates, 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children will be obese by 2050, creating health problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and blindness that will cost the National Health Service an additional £45.5 billion a year in treatment. The Foresight report, launched in London on Tuesday, is the result of a two-year study into the causes of obesity in the UK. It says that because our bodies are evolved to cope with food scarcity and hard physical work, we've been caught out by the glut of food and lack of exercise characteristic of modern western life so we put on weight without realising it until it's too late. “
” "We've coined the phrase passive obesity," says David King, the government's chief scientific adviser. "The net result is that you put a tiny bit of weight on each day, but over 365 days it builds up." A scientific working group has been appointed to urgently prepare a national action plan. "We don't have much time," says King. Nor has any other country produced a successful "model" solution to copy, he adds. From issue 2626 of New Scientist magazine, 22 October 2007, page 7
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