Fast-food addiction fuels nation’s obesity disaster
MILLIONS of children are “sleepwalking” towards a lifetime of disease because of a junk-food obsession, experts warn.
Some 800,000 sugar-obsessed 10 and 11-year-olds are now officially overweight or obese as they gorge on cheap and easily available fast food.
By 2030 the UK is set to become Europe’s fattest country, with 37 per cent of the nation’s adults obese, according to the World Health Organization.
Days after ministers scrapped sweeping plans to outlaw unhealthy food deals, the public health crisis will be brought into sharp focus this week.
The Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee will be told tomorrow how decades of policy failures exacerbated the epidemic.
And on Friday the world’s first food-addiction conference takes place in Bristol, organised by horrified public health experts. They fear the relentless promotion of heavily industrialised and aggressively marketed “fake food” is leading the nation towards an early grave.
Speaker Dr Jen Unwin, a chartered clinical and health psychologist, said: “Diets high in sugar and ultra-processed foods lead not just to obesity but to mental health problems, chronic illnesses and shortened life spans.
“Year by year we see these conditions worsening, putting unsustainable pressure on the NHS. We are sleepwalking into a public health disaster.”
Jen’s husband is healthy eating expert Dr David Unwin, who teaches patients how to control diets without using Type 2 diabetes combating drugs like met form in.
He warned: “No matter how much money we pour into the NHS, it will never be enough to supply demand from failing public health.We are asleep at the wheel.”
Also among the hundreds of attendees will be GP and metabolic expert Dr Campbell Murdoch, Dr Paul Earley, former president for the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and Bitten Jonsson, a global authority on sugar addiction.
The cost of our obesity crisis is now estimated at a staggering £58billion a year.
The conference has been organised to expose the largely unrecognised march of a generation of children towards a health crisis and outline the urgent action needed.
Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “The truth is nothing much has changed, which is appalling.
“Last year’s Queen Speech promised action on obesity – particularly in the early years. This year it didn’t mention the obesity crisis once. I will chastise the Department of Health and Social Care for failing to monitor children’s health properly for 20-plus years.”
The National Child Measurement programme shows 41 per cent of 10 and 11-year-old pupils were overweight or obese in 2020/21 – which is up from 31.6 per cent in 2006/07. Some 6.3 per cent were classified as severely obese.
Offers fuelling the crisis – multi-buy deals such as buy-one-get-one-free, three-for-two promotions and free fizzy drink refills – were set to be banned from October.
But the Government postponed the move for at least a year in a dramatic weekend