HEALTH

More than 22,000 out of 556,000 10 to 11-year-olds in primary school are severely obese, nearly twice the number of reception children aged four and five who are dangerously overweight, new Local Government Association analysis shows.

Now the LGA, which represents 370 councils in England and Wales, warns severe child obesity rates are contributing to a “multi-billion pound ill-health time bomb”.

Severe obesity can shorten a person’s life by 10 years – an equivalent loss to the effects of lifelong smoking.

Scientists say regular boozers risk heart failure if they have a faulty gene – even if they drink moderately.

They found alcohol can accelerate cardiac problems in drinkers with a protein called titin carried by one in 100 people – leading to a type of heart failure called dilated cardiomyopathy.

None of the 716 patients in the study drank heavily. Scientists found even moderately increased alcohol affected heart pumping power in patients with the faulty gene. Report co-author Dr Paul Barton said: “Alcohol and the heart have a complicated relationship.”

Junk food companies are looking at ways adverts can “hijack” children’s brains.

That’s the claim by a top obesity campaigner after firms employed experts in so-called neuromarketing to analyse brain scans and see how unconscious decisions are made to eat one snack rather than another.

Leading expert Kelly Brownell, of Duke University in North Carolina, said: “I would be interested to see what effects are produced by just looking at advertising. Does food marketing hijack the brain? There is interesting neuroscientific research looking at the impact of sugar on the brain.”

MARTIN BAGOT is the Mirror’s Health Correspondent