Fear of a Fat Future

Obesity is now a global epidemic, affecting more people worldwide than malnutrition – and researchers at the University of Exeter in the South West of England believe that it's an epidemic caused by inactivity. 

Over the last 15 years scientists at the University have studied activity levels in over a thousand children. They found that repeated health warnings have had little or no effect. Children today still aren't taking enough exercise to combat obesity.

Despite fears about junk food diets, most children aren't taking on more calories than they used to. They just aren't doing enough to burn off those calories, as television watching and computer games take the place of sports and active play. Surveys held in the US show that, between 1980 and 1994, obesity trebled in adolescents and doubled in children.

Children who start life obese are statistically far more likely to become obese adults, falling victim to a range of diseases including coronary heart disease, high blood pressure and, as researchers at the nearby University of Bristol have established, the increasing threat of diabetes.