News
Louis Dor
Apr 01, 2016
Britain will be the fattest country in Europe in a decade, the largest ever obesity study has found.
The new figures predict that 37.7 per cent of people in the UK will be obese by 2025, according to the study by the School of Public Health at Imperial College London.
Professor Majid Ezzazi, the senior author of the study, said:
This epidemic of severe obesity is too extensive to be tackled with medications such as blood pressure lowering drugs or diabetes treatments alone, or with a few extra bike lanes...
Obesity has reached crisis point. We need coordinated global initiatives – such as looking at the price of healthy food compared to unhealthy food, or taxing high sugar and highly processed foods - to tackle this crisis.
In 1975, the average British person had a BMI of 23, but today the figure stands at roughly 27, with the average person in the UK gaining more than three pounds a decade.
Obesity currently accounts for just under half the NHS's budget, roughly £47 billion a year.
More:These are the most obese countries in the world
More:Eric Pickles: Not British for NHS to discriminate against obese people
Top 100
The Conversation (0)
x