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Obesity: Facts behind the fiction
| All the drama-documentaries in the IF series are based on rigorous journalism and research, here's a few facts about obesity and its effect on the health of the UK.70% of men and 63% of women in the UK are overweight or obese. Cases of obesity in the UK have tripled over the last 20 years. By 2020, at least one third of adults, one fifth of boys and one third of girls will be obese. Obesity reduces life expectancy on average by nine years. Obesity accounts for 30,000 deaths a year in the UK. Obesity costs the British economy over �2bn every year. In 2001, we ate 2bn meals from fast food restaurants in the UK. For each additional can of fizzy (sugar-sweetened) drink that a child consumes every day their risk of obesity increases by 60%. The combined annual marketing spend of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola is $2.2bn.
(Source: Tim Lang, professor of Food Policy at City University)One in five children in Britain eat no fruit at all. One in three Americans born in 2000 will develop diabetes. There are only 13 specialist obesity surgeons in the UK and only 10 specialist obesity surgery centres. The average cost to produce a school meal is 35p, just over half the amount spent on British prison meals.
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