Childhood Obesity Rockets

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Childhood and teenage obesity is spreading across the world at an alarming rate – and this week the first evidence of the extent of the crisis has been published. Experts at the World Health Organization and Imperial College, London analysed data from more than 2000 studies, involving 128 million children and adolescents worldwide. If this trend continues, there will be more overweight children than underweight in five years’ time. If you saw someone with a sign on the street saying “free listening here”, would you pull up and chair, sit down and tell them all of your problems? In Oakland, California, passers-by are doing just that – thanks to the “active listening” of Sidewalk Talks volunteers. Those involved say it’s life-changing. Babies aren’t born with a sense of empathy – it’s something which develops over years. But a British psychologist says he believes an experiment he’s carried out on four-month old babies shows the foundations of empathy are evident early in life. When babies were shown a video of a brush stroking someone else’s hand at the same time as their own hand was tickled – the patterns of electrical activity in the “touch” areas of their brains were altered. (Photo: Getty Images)