Today’s youngsters are already falling prey to potential killers such as diabetes because of their weight. Fatty fast-food diets combined with sedentary lifestyles dominated by televisions and computers could mean kids will die tragically young, says Professor Andrew Prentice, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
At the same time, the shape of the human body is going through a huge evolutionary shift because adults are getting so fat. Here in Britain, latest research shows that the average waist size for a man is 36-38in. This compares with only 32.6in in 1972. Women’s waists have grown from an average of 22in in 1920 to 24in in the Fifties and 30in now.
In the UK alone, more than one million under-16s are classed as overweight or obese—double the number in the mid-Eighties. One in ten four-year-olds are also medically classified as obese. The obesity pandemic which started in the US, has now spread to Europe, Australasia, Central America and the Middle East. Many nations now record more than 20 per cent of their population as clinically obese and well over half the population as overweight.
Prof Prentice said the change in our shape has been caused by easily available high-energy foods combined with a dramatic drop in the energy we use as a result of technology developments.