 Specialists and health education & organisations working in health action zones:
One in three adults in the UK is overweight, while one in four is obese, according to a recent study. Even more troubling is what is happening to the children. Not only does Britain have the highest rate of overweight kids in all of Europe, but it also has the highest rate of overweight teenagers. Most experts agree that the nation's waistline will continue to swell if the problem is ignored, as it has been for the last decade.
If this were merely an issue of aesthetics, it wouldn't be a big deal. But weight, as you may know, has a profound effect on health. Each year, more than 10,000 people in the UK die from obesity-related diseases, making it the leading cause of preventable death, ahead of smoking. What are the dangers? Really, there are almost too many to mention. The following is a brief list of the most common risks of being overweight: high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, arthritis, heart disease, and several types of cancer. Not to mention the damage that you will do to your carpets flooring. Just kidding! Above all others, the disease that is probably the most troubling is type 2 diabetes. Unlike cancer or heart disease, which has a strong genetic component, type 2 diabetes is almost completely preventable. All you have to do is eat right and avoid massive weight gains. Well over ninety percent of people who are diagnosed with this acquired form of diabetes are overweight or obese. Health officials were stunned when they recorded a 74 percent increase in new cases of type diabetes 2 over six years (between 1997 and 2003). But that was small potatoes compared to the more than one hundred thousand new cases (a record) last year. As you might expect, this growing epidemic is taking its toll on the already exiguous budget of the NHS.
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