The British Medical Journal has reported that operations for gastric banding and bypasses have increased in numbers from 238 in the year 2000 to 2,543 operations in 2007. There are a number of different types of operations that people can have to help them lose weight, known collectively as bariatric surgery. Each works by restricting the amount of nutrients that can be digested in the intestine. Gastric banding involves surgically placing a band around the stomach to reduce its size and a gastric bypass sends food to another sack created by surgeons. A third method is not used very often and this involves the removal of part of the stomach. There is another technique called gastric ballooning, where a surgical balloon is inflated in the stomach to reduce its size.

Researchers from Imperial College London discovered that 75% of the operations were carried out using keyhole techniques and that there seemed to be low risk involved with this type of surgery considering the results and the increase in patients seeking this type of operation.

Between the years 2000 and 2008 there have been 6, 953 bariatric operations carried out by the NHS in the UK and the researchers suggest that primary care trusts should be encouraged to pay for it as it is a viable way of treating morbidly obese patients. Imperial College tells us that it also reduces the effects of other illnesses associated with obesity, such as diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

Peter Sedman, a bariatric surgeon, claims that whatever money is put into these surgeries by the NHS will help prevent problems that would otherwise be out of control in years to come. Chrissie Palmer from the British Obesity Surgery Patients Association, states that despite advice from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, these operations are not available in certain areas around the UK. She explains that public opinion remains a little negative regarding surgery for the morbidly obese, despite the preparation and commitment required.

NICE recommends that although these surgeries are beneficial, they should only be a last resort and that individual trusts should commission various services to meet the needs of their community.

More obesity news and this time it is not about suppressing our hunger with medical treatments but actually about what we feed ourselves that may be the answer to beating obesity. Researchers are investigating the effects of certain types of fibre found in particular vegetables and how they help suppress hunger.

Most will be happy to hear that the fibres in question are found in asparagus, artichoke, garlic and chicory – so nothing too vile-tasting! These fermentable carbohydrates in these vegetables activate hormones in the gut which suppress appetite. Due to their ability to produce additional sensitivity to insulin, the fermentable carbohydrates have a positive effect on glucose levels. Finding out more about how these foods affect our bodies may help us to prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes according to Nicola Guess of Imperial College. The carbohydrates will be given to the participants of the study in the form of a daily supplement.

Dr. Iain Frame of Diabetes UK, states that although it is unlikely that any one preventative measure will be successful, the research being carried out at Imperial College is important and that they may result in innovative ways of preventing Type 2 diabetes.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati, in a study they carried out earlier this month, have found that the best way to motivate obese individuals is to emphasise the immediate benefits they will enjoy from exercise and eating right rather than warning them about the more long term effects they are leaving themselves open to by not changing their diets and amending their lifestyle choices.

One of the greatest sources of pain for those who suffer from obesity is the immense strain of weight on the musculoskeletol system. According to Susan Kotowski, study collaborator, increasing the level of focus on the pain reduction benefits associated with exercise and a change in diet, the more motivated sufferers become.

The researchers found that of those involved in the local weight loss programme, 21% felt a considerable relief from pain in the back and lower part of the body after losing ten pounds. Furthermore, the results showed that even the smallest amount of could benefit those who experience great pain daily. The researchers believe that this will influence an entirely different approach to weight loss programs.

So, what is the best way to approach diet and exercise? The media is full of different potions and lotions but how do we pick which one is best for us? Doing a little bit every day and making small changes is the best approach and fad diets do not keep the weight off.

It is said that we should be pumping money into the preservation of ‘wellness’ as well as obesity. An estimated £3 billion is spent by the NHS each year on obesity. By funding anti-obesity campaigns and programs, we are not getting rid of the problem, we are maintaining it. According to Dr. Weiler of Imperial College Healthcare Trust, London, only 1 in 20 people are exercising the recommended daily amount and yet most of the money goes into helping those who already have a weight problem.

A recent survey revealed that one in five children do not receive any encouragement from their parents to join in with after school sports or other physical activities outside of the mandatory physical education classes. But so many factors affect this type of behaviour like psychological factors relating to the parents’ own level of activity, physical situations- such as distance from after school activities, attitudes, socioeconomic status…. the list goes on. This is why campaigns which seek to teach healthy youngsters on a large scale are making giant steps in the eventual combat of obesity.

In the new government’s first indication of how they will be tacking the obesity crisis, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has said that government funding of the Change4Life public health campaign is to be withdrawn.

He has said that he is hoping to see businesses take on responsibility for paying for the TV ads and marketing materials handed out in schools and public centres that have been directed at children, parents and at-risk groups. So far, the Labour government spend £50 million on the program.

Mr. Lansley has said that it would be in the interests of businesses to be associated with the Change4Life brand, adding that commercial food manufacturers did not want their products to be seen as ‘harmful’ but products that can be incorporated into a healthy diet.

The Health Secretary said that though the brand had achieved a lot, with nearly 9 out of 10 mothers recognising it, the time had come for a new approach.

There was also an indication that he wants to move from the ‘nanny state’ approach to obesity, promising to focus on changing behaviour rather than the ‘lecturing’ attitude that he said characterized Labour’s approach.

While clearly there will be cutbacks left, right and centre and Change4Life was a fairly obvious target, the prospect of businesses funding the campaign is a little bit disturbing. If it is sponsored by brands with unimpeachable healthy living credentials, such as sports companies, then it could work well – but it could also descend into a hypocritical farce, which junk food makers pushing both the foods that are causing obesity and the message that diet is the key to avoiding the same problem!

We have just heard that Novo Nordisk is to reinitiate Phase III clinical trials for Liraglutide as an anti-obesity drug. Liraglutide is already licensed as a treatment for diabetes and has shown great promise as an anti-obesity agent.  A trial in 2009 appeared to demonstrate efficacy and safety. A wider trial of 5000 people is to begin in 2011. The company behind the new drug wanted to wait until they had a marketing authorization for the drug as a treatment for diabetes in the US before it pursued further obesity trials.

Liraglutide is marketed under the name Victoza and is a glugogonlike peptide (GLP-1). Liraglutide appears to be highly effective as a weight loss drug but one likely drawback is that it cannot be taken in tablet or capsule form – it must be injected subcutaneously. This could lead to patient compliance issues but studies are afoot to determine whether the administration regimen can be reduced to once a week.

The study into Liraglutide as a weight loss medication is an exciting development but do not expect it to be licensed before 2013.

The Health Watchdog has claimed that junk food is costing 4000 lives each year. They have suggested that the government should pay food companies to manufacture healthy foods, estimating that this would save tens of thousands of lives.

NICE – or the National Instititute of Clinical Excellence – has called for sweeping changes in the way that food is produced and how it is sold to consumers. They have demanded that manufacturers reduce the amount of salt and sugar in the food.

They have also recommended that companies and public bodies, such as hospitals and schools, push workers to ditch their cars by abandoning subsidised car parking.

In the document, officials from NICE set out a list of measures they believe should be implemented, including eliminating trans fats from food in order to bring down average salt intake and saturated fat consumption.

They call for there to be guarantees to ensure that low-fat, low-salt foods are cheaper than the unhealthy equivalent and recommend that the government consider legislation and fiscal levers to change pricing on food. Studies have shown that poorer people are more likely to eat badly, as unhealthy food tends to be the cheaper option.

However the Food and Drink Federation has criticised NICE, who are better known for making decisions about which drugs should be used in the NHS, for overstepping the mark. They said that the guidance  was out of touch with the current situation and that the food industry was voluntarily trying to make popular brands healthier.

A new study has shown that not only is obesity damaging health-wise, but it also seems to have a strong negative impact on sexual behaviour.

French researchers have shown that women who are obese are less likely to ask for advice on contraception or use the pill. They were also more likely to have unplanned pregnancies, despite having fewer sexual partners than those who did not have weight problems. The rate of unplanned pregnancies was 4 times higher amongst obese women than in the rest of the group. Obese women when compared to the women of normal weight were 30% less likely to have had a sexual partner over the past year.

Men who were obese reported a higher incidence of erectile dysfunction. However though they were engaging in sexual contact less, they were more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease.

Overall, data was collected on the sexual behaviour of over 12,000 French men and women.  From this group, 1010 women  and 1488 men were overweight and 411 women and 350 men were obese.

Lead researcher Nathalie Bajos, research director at Paris’ National Institute of Health and Medical Research and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that obesity strongly influenced people’s sex lives.

She said that the research had revealed that social stigma meant obese women were more likely to find sexual partners online, as they were ‘not comfortable meeting men through friends, through work, through parties’.

She also noted that doctors were less likely to prescribe and discuss contraception with the women.

Dr. Sandy Goldbeck Wood, who wrote the accompanying editorial in the British Medical Journal , urged that the data be treated with cautious interpretation. She said that more needed to be understood about how obese people feel about their sex lives, though the complex biological, psychological and social factors would require a qualitative research approach.

It seems that advertising for junk food has had a strong impact on the number of children who are obese the UK. Researchers from University College London believe that adverts are connected to ‘devastating consequences’ for children’s health.

In a report, the team said that banning junk food adverts could cut rates of childhood obesity, which are rising all over the country, by as much as 14%. The report concluded that food advertising had an unhealthy impact on how children aged between 6 and 11 eat.

In the report, which was lead by Dr. Emmanuel Stanatakis, the authors call for a total ban on junkfood advertising aimed at children. Currently, such adverts are banned during programs aimed specifically at children.

Children were described as being particularly vulnerable to adverts, and were likely to develop artificial needs and respond well to inappropriate role models.

Recently, parents campaigned against adverts by Kelloggs for Coco Pops, which tried to rebrand the chocolately cereal as an appropriate snack for any time of day. Many parents said they already found it difficult enough to resist the calls of their children for unhealthy snacks after school.

A test scheme has shown that dieters who are paid to lose weight are far more likely to succeed than those who are not.

The scheme is called Weight Wins and so far has paid dieters tens of thousands of pounds in a bid to tackle obesity. Dieters sign up for a pound-for-pound scheme, where they get paid for every pound they lose and then are given a cash bonus after a certain number of months if they manage to keep the weight off.

The scheme is supported by the NHS, which means that dieters have access to NHS dieticians and are given help choosing how they want to lose weight.

Those taking part see their rewards vary depending on how long their weight-loss plan is. Monies received ranged from £80 to £3,000. When the program was audited by the independent University of Hertfordshire, it was discovered that the 745 people taking part in the scheme lost 1 stone on average, compared with the 5lb 4 oz lost by those following traditional diet methods without monetary compensation.

45% of patients lost 5% or more of their body weight – the benchmark regulators use to judge whether a scheme or medication is effective – and 1 participant lost 8 stone.

However, a spokesperson for the NHS Eastern and Coastal Kent said that ¾ of participants dropped out of the scheme before it was completed. 

The scheme may seem fairly repellent, but it is likely that if participants do keep the weight off, the taxpayer would actually be better off. The cost of treating obesity-related illnesses is huge and it has been suggested that within 20 years obesity could cripple the NHS.

The Department of Health strategy for tackling obesity has already suggested that financial incentives to lose weight could be introduced. America has already brought in similar schemes and many U.S businesses are giving staff bonuses if they manage to lose weight.

In a statement, a DoH spokesperson said that any nationwide scheme to pay people to lose weight would only be introduced with ‘sound evidence’ to back it up.

A leading health expert has come out publicly and said that he thinks teenagers and perhaps even children should be fitted with gastric bands.

Professor Nick Finer of University College Hospital is an expert in obesity and earlier in the year told the Royal Society of Medicine that severely obese children should be permitted to undergo bariatric surgery, such as gastric banding.

He says that as excess fat  can affect the blood vessels in children as young as 6, the ethical issues regarding surgery for children are outweighed by the dangers of not taking action.

The former chair of the UK Association for the Study of Obesity told The Times that the current guidelines set out by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) which say that a patient must have a body mass index of over 40 (or 35 in cases where there are severe health problems) and that surgery for under-18s should only be considered in the most extreme circumstances are too conservative.

He added that the treatment of obesity could be likened to the attitudes regarding treating children with leukaemia, as when chemotherapy first became available people argue that it was unethical to subject children to the suffering chemotherapy causes when it might only extend life by a year. That life expectancy has now been significantly extended with 70% of cases of childhood leukaemia being cured, and he believes that similarly doctors should see whether surgery could be successful in helping prevent diabetes and liver disease in children.

The Times article comes in the same week that a report was published in renowed medical journal The Lancet, in which health experts said that surgery should only be considered in the most severe cases and only when diet and exercise treatments had failed.

The report pointed out that in 9 out of 10 cases of childhood obesity, lifestyle was the cause of the problem rather than hormonal problems or genes.

Three health charities have launched a new campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of the ‘spare tyre’, or the area of fat around the waist.

A survey of 2,085 people showed that 97% of people were unaware that there is a link between an over-large waistline and heart disease, although nearly three quarters of those surveyed said they had noticed their own waistlines expanding.

The survey also showed that people generally overestimated the point at which an expanding waistline becomes a risk to health. For women, measurements over over 31.5 inches are a cause for concern, while for men this is 37 inches.

Though a series of studies have been done showing that waist size can be a key indicator of someone’s risk factor for developing a host of diseases, including cancer and diabetes, it is clear that the message has not yet filtered through to the wider public.

Diabetes UK, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research are now working together to try to change this. They are hoping to persuade food manufacturers to label food as standard with the ‘traffic light’ labelling system.

They have also launched a series of viral adverts, featuring a rather unpleasant character called ‘Fat’ who apparently enjoys messing with the lives of the overweight (the little evil eyes are particularly disturbing and seems to be modelled on Ross Kemp). Anyone needing a little extra motivation with their diet can see it here

Though many food companies have cut down on the amount of transfats they include in their food, UK public health experts have called for a total ban on the ingredient.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, scientists estimated that the solid fats, found in margarine, cakes and junk food, were responsible for a significant number of deaths each year. They estimated that were there to be a 1% reduction in UK consumption, 7,000 deaths each year could be prevented.

Transfats are added to food to improve taste and shelf life, but they do not have any nutritional value. Studies have shown that they can raise cholesterol levels and lead to heart disease.

Earlier this year, the UK facility of Public Health warned that through the average UK resident’s transfat intake only makes up 1% of their daily calorie intake, in some areas and communities, the intake is far higher, putting those groups at risk. Scientists believe that when intake exceeds 2%, the consumer is risking their health.

The Food Standards Agency currently say that as the UK’s average intake is in the safe zone, a total ban is unnecessary.

However in the article, doctors from the Harvard Medical School supported the ban, pointing to the bans in Denmark and New York City which they said had improved health without affecting taste or affordability.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davies of the UK Faculty of Public Health said that his organisation was particularly concerned by the differences in the amount of transfats consumed amongst societal groups and said that young people and those with low incomes were particularly at risk of consuming large amounts of the fats.

Liverpool Council is apparently considering banning the use of the word "obesity" in its literature aimed at children.

The decision comes after the Liverpool Schools Parliament, made up of 9 to 11 year olds who are asked to give their views to the council, asked that the description ‘unhealthy weight’ be used instead to describe children with dangerous weight problems.

The children on the council said that they considered the word ‘obese’ to be offensive and feared that its use might discourage overweight children from taking action to get healthy.

The proposal is not certain to go through, but a spokesperson for the council said that it would be considered as part of a request for ideas as part of its Children and Young People’s Plan. If it is accepted then it will become part of the official strategy  to improve health in the area.

Liverpool is known as an obesity blackspot, with over half of all boys aged eleven and 40% of all girls classified as obese.

Obesity charity Child Growth Foundation has criticised the proposal, saying that it encourages children to ignore the realities of life. Spokeswomen Tamsin Fry said that by using phrases like unhealthy weight, officials would just be fudging the problem.

She added that for clinicians, obese was a word that clearly states that someone has a Body Mass Index over 30, the point at when their health is seriously at risk. She said that people who reach this point need to understand the severity of the problem.

The wild cravings we all get for junk food from time to time may feel illogical and uncontrollable, but according to scientists junk food is in fact as addictive as hard drugs. Cheeseburgers – the legal form of crack?

A team of scientists have shown that when a group of rats were fed a diet of foods high in fat and sugars, this caused them to compulsively overeat. The team also recorded changes in the rats’ brains similar to those which happen in the human brain when someone is addicted to heroin or cocaine.

The three year study showed that a diet of junk food totally overruled the rats’ normal behaviour, causing them to either starve when their desired food was not available or overeat drastically.

The rats quickly became to desperate for the fatty food that they would even put up with painful electric shocks to obtain it. They also chose to starve themselves than eat the healthier alternatives eaten by the group that had never been exposed to junk.

By analysing the brains of the rats, the research team showed that just as a pleasure-reward system in humans becomes over stimulated through drug addiction, the rats were forced to eat more and more fatty foods to get the same high of pleasure.

The lead scientists on the study, Professor Paul Kenny of the Scripps Research Institute in Florida, said that the results provided very clear evidence that drug addiction and obesity are rooted in ‘the same underlying neurobiological mechanisms’.

Newcastle University scientists have said that research indicates that seaweed could be a powerful tool in the fight against obesity.

They have discovered that the fibre found in sea kelp, alginate, can reduce the update of fat by the body by up to 75%.  The scientists created an ‘articifical gut’, which was used as a tool to test how 60 different natural fibres affected the digestion of fat.

Alginate is already used in foods in small quantities as a thickener. Dr. Iain Brownlee, who headed the research, said that their findings suggested that if the seaweed product was added to commonly eaten foods, such as bread, biscuits and yoghurts, three quarters of the fat content in the meal could just pass through the body.

He added that when his team added alginate to bread, initial taste tests were encouraging and that they were agreed clinical trials were now needed to see how effective alginate is when eaten as part of a normal diet.

He added that many slimming pills sold over the counter made claims for miracle weight loss, but only a few had gone through clinical trials to gain scientific evidence to back them up.

One pill already uses alginate as the key ingredient, Goldshield’s APPEsat. Clinical trials showed the pill reduces appetite, though this is thought to be due to the seaweed expanding in the stomach and sending messages to the brain relating to satiety and how full the belly is.

Obesity charity The National Obesity Forum greeted the Newcastle team’s findings cautiously. Dr. David Haslam, chair of the organisation, told the BBC that the findings looked interesting but that they could only recommend it if there were positive results from vigorous trials.

An east London council has said that a scheme they introduced a year ago banning fast food venues from targeting schoolchildren has resulted in a reduction in child obesity.

The council banned junk food shops from opening within 400m of schools, parks and leisure centres. Secondary schools in the area also routinely ban schoolchildren from leaving school premises to get lunch, ensuring that through school dinners they at least receive one healthy meal a day.

Since the policy was introduced, no new fast food restaurants have opened in the borough. The number of fast food outlets in the borough has fallen from 253 to 241, resulting in the rates of obesity amongst Waltham Forest’s children in year 6 (9 and 10 year olds) falling. For the age group, obesity levels from from 22.8% in the year before the ban was introduced to 20.6% in 2008/9.

The council said that residents of the borough had overwhelmingly backed the drive to cut obesity levels and added that they hoped it would not only lead to streets becoming cleaner and safer but would offer a better mix of shops, cafes and restaurants.Over the last year, the council have rejected 5 applications from new takeaway companies.

They say that 15 other councils have now been in contact to get more details about the scheme, with the intention of setting it up in their own boroughs.

If you are interested in how fast food is significantly affecting obesity levels in the West, there was a fantastic article in the Guardian about how the addictive combination of salt, sugar and fat in junk food has changed the way we eat but left us with a terrifying legacy of obesity.  The article is extracted from author David A Kessler’s book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of Our Insatiable Appetite, which could also be worth a read. 

New legislation in Scotland may give the state unprecedented influence over people’s diets, as part of the war against the country's growing obesity epidemic.

Holyrood’s SNP administration has asked chefs to reduce the calories in their meals, but claim that failure to follow these recommendations will lead to legislation being enforced if ‘sufficient’ progress is not made.

This new strategy of intervention has come about as a result of the state’s claim that the general population is unwilling to make the changes necessary for good health, of their own free will.

Minister’s have estimated that if current trends continued, 40 percent of the population could be classed as obese by 2030, at a cost of £3 billion a year to the already fragile economy.

Michelin-starred chef Martin Wishart has publically announced his refusal to change the menu of his award winning restaurant, citing the freedom of choice of his customers as paramount.

Within the proposed strategy there were also calls for the sale of sweets near tills to be banned and a restriction on promotions, such as two for one offers, to health foods only.

The strategy has been agreed by Scotland’s 32 councils and the Scottish Executive, but early indications suggest that it may take up to 30 years to make progress!

There has been widespread alarm as statistics were released showing that there has been an 8-fold rise in the number of hospitals admissions for obesity.

The NHS Information Centre put the data in the public sphere to make the nation aware of the pressure obesity is putting on the health services.

Almost 1 in 4 UK adults is obese, with 59% more people being admitted to hospital than last year, 8 times the number admitted between 1998/9. In 2008/9, 7,990 patients went into hospital due to their weight problems, with bariatric surgeries such as gastric bands and stomach stapling doubling over two years, from 1,950 to 4,220.

There has also been a dramatic increase in the number of prescriptions being written for slimming drugs, increasing by 10 times. This however is to be expected, as new slimming pills were approved by NICE.

The Chief Executive of the NHS Information Centre, Tim Straughan, said that the report highlighted both the impact excess weight was having on society and the NHS.

The Shadow Health Minister Mike Penning lambasted the government for being ‘shamefully complacent’ about the problem. The Department of Health responded by saying that they were investing time and money to prevent people becoming obese in the first place.

We all know that eating junk food is not a particularly good idea. Any junk food, whether it is burgers, crisps or fizzy drinks, when consumed excessively on a daily basis, have a detrimental effect on health as well as waistlines. The very things that make junk foods taste so appealing: sugar; salt; and saturated fats are the same things which make them so unhealthy.

There are the obvious effects of having to treat the related health problems: heart disease; diabetes; risk of stroke; and increased risk of cancer to name but a few. There is also the added problem, however, of having to deal with the increase in obese patients: bigger beds; wider operating tables; new equipment; and difficulty in moving patients to name but a few less obvious ones.

With the NHS feeling the strain of treating obese patients it is, perhaps, rather surprising that fast food outlets such as Burger King are being opened within the hospitals that are struggling to treat the consequences of a diet of burgers, chips, coca cola and other junk foods. This is occurring at a time when health trusts are offering patients financial incentives to lose weight. The firm Weight Wins, which is being employed by various trusts, is offering a ‘pound for pound’ plan.

So is it inappropriate or just part of modern life that there are these outlets within hospitals? The irony is that if people are in hospital being treated for a disease related to obesity, it is highly unlikely that the junk food that they consumed to become obese was bought on hospital grounds but surely opening branches up in hospitals send out the wrong signal?

When, in 2008, it was revealed by the tabloid press that the television presenter Fern Britton had been fitted with a gastric band it led to considerable debate about the pros and cons of such invasive weight loss surgery.

There was considerable anger that Britton, who had lost a considerable amount of weight in the preceding two years, had never admitted to having had the surgery whilst also advertising low fat foods and advocating healthy eating as a way of losing weight.

All together now: “I like big butts and I cannot lie…” The catchy masterwork of a slightly pervy rap artist, or the prophetic advice of a health guru 20 years before his time?

Okay, probably the great Sir Mix-A-Lot was just a dirty sod, but he has been proved right about one thing – we should like big butts, because according to scientists, fat around the bottom and thighs could protect women against conditions like heart disease and diabetes.

Last week we heard that fat around the waist was especially dangerous, an early warning sign of dangerously high cholesterol, but is seems that just as there are good and bad cholesterols, there are also good and bad fats which are generally found in specific areas of the body.

Dr Konstantinos Manopoulos, from the team at Oxford who carried out a review of research into lower-body fat, said that the cells in lower body fat work differently to upper body fat.

Cells in fats deposits around the bottom, known as gluteofemoral fat, reduce the effect of a dangerous protein, which can cause inflammation and disease. The Oxford scientists called for more research to be done into body fat distribution, calling it a ‘major determinant of metabolic health.’

As most women have at some point screeched the age-old cry of ‘Does my bum look big in this?’, they also suggested that their research meant that stars like the generously-padded Beyonce and curvaceous J-Lo were good role models for women, as they make large bottoms seem desirable.

Jolly, kind, cuddly and nice to good children – what’s not to like about Santa, right? Well, apparently a better description would be obese, drunk, lazy and a dangerous drink driver, according to some rather Scrooge-like Australian researchers.

The team from Monash University in Melbourne have written in the British Medical Journal that Santa should be rebranded for a more health-conscious age. They believe images of him in advertising should be regulated because of the potentially harmful messages he conveys.

Santa has been accused of ‘promoting obesity’ by scoffing down all the mince pies left out for him by hopeful children.  Considering the number of sugary treats he eats, it’s surprising he is slim enough to fit into his sleigh at all, or that his reindeer are strong enough to lift him.

The paper also pointed out that by drinking all the glasses of sherry left out for him in the world, he would be swiftly over the drink driving limit. However this boozy monster does not even bother to wear a seatbelt.

He is also a prime candidate to spread swine flu around the world, with most Santa impersonators not getting a health check and then getting ‘kissed and hugged...by snotty-nosed kids’.

Dr. Grills, who authored the paper, has suggested that Santa’s pies be replaced with celery or carrot sticks. Perhaps an added benefit of this is that consuming that many vegetables would probably produce enough gas for the sleigh to be powered by farts alone, giving the reindeer a nice Christmas holiday.

It could also be argued that though, as Dr. Grills points out, his roof-top skimming, chimney-diving antics promote dangerous sports like free jumping and roof-running, he is showing that older people can still take up sporting hobbies, no matter what age or weight they are...

Researchers have warned that class is going to play an increasing role in determining which children become obese over the next five years, causing certain societal groups to be far worse hit by the problem..

The team from University College Hospital found that while childhood obesity rates are levelling off, this was mostly amongst children from wealthier backgrounds. Children from lower classes were significantly more likely to be overweight by 2015, with girls at especial risk.

The researchers used historical trends to predict that though currently 6.9% of boys and 7.4% of girls are obese, in five years this is likely to have risen to above 10% of boys and 8.9% of girls. However this is the average for the entire British population aged between 2 to 10 – in actually, there is likely to be a large diversion between obesity rates for different classes, with children from professional families seeing obesity in their children drop to 5.4%, while those from lower classes will see it rise to 11.4%.

The team said that these rates were likely to continue as the boys entered adolescence, though it became less pronounced among teenage girls.

They suggested that those from lower socio-economic groups were less likely to listen to governmental messages about healthy living, such as the Change4Life program, seeing them as a symptom of the nanny state.  The researchers also called for public health action to ‘narrow social inequalities in health’.

A spokeperson from the Department of Health said that the evidence showing childhood obesity was levelling off was down to the hard work of families, schools and the NHS but admitted that obesity levels were too high and momentum was needed to turn the tide.

Dutch scientists believe that waist size could be an accurate predictor of heart disease. In a study published yesterday, they discovered that not only were half of all heart disease cases linked to being overweight but that BMI and waist measurements could be an indicator for the risk of dying from heart disease.

Over 10 years the scientists studied 20,000 men and women aged between 20 and 65. They discovered that weight was a strong indicator of fatal heart disease. They adjusted the statistics to take into account the general population, as average weight was lower than the average for the volunteers, and concluded that 1 in 3 heart fatalities were due to weight.

This means that the 67,000 deaths from heart disease recorded in Britain each year could have far stronger links to weight than previously realised. Health charities have warned that by 2015, obesity rates could double, putting huge strain on NHS resources.

It was found that patients with a waist circumference that put them in the obese category, namely in men over 102 cm and in women more than 88cm, were three times  more likely to develop heart disease.

Chief researcher Dr. Ineke Van Dis said of the findings that in the future, the impact of obesity was likely to drastically increase the ‘burden of heart disease’.   He added that for health services and consumer groups, this meant that there was an even greater need for policies to prevent obesity in the first place.

The president of the British Society of Gastroenterology has said that followers of fad diets are developing a ‘quasi-religious’ attitude towards the right foods to eat, despite their being little to no scientific evidence that they are beneficial.

Speaking at the Gastro 2009 conference, Professor Chris Hawkey drew attention to over a dozen diets that have hit the headlines, such as the alkaline diet, which advocates eating certain foods to maintain the slightly alkaline nature of the blood, rawism, which believes that eating uncooked food is more nutritious, and the ‘chewing diet’, which claims that chewing each mouthful 32 times aids digestion.

He warned especially that the grapefruit diet, beloved by celebrities like Kylie Minogue, in all likelihood didn’t work as the enzyme in the fruit that has been proven to aid weightloss would probably be broken down in the gut before it had time to break down body fat.

He said that since the start of time, food has been ‘shrouded in myths and fairy tales’ but warned that despite the different diets which were gaining popularity, the country was still losing its battle against the obesity epidemic.

He added that the obesity problem was not a result of the kinds of food being eaten but the quantities they were being consumed in. He recommended that ‘quirky’ diets be abandoned in favour of increased exercise and sensible eating to prevent long-term conditions.

The Online Clinic is prepared to help those for whom normal dieting and exercising has not assisted with a noticable weight loss. We can presribe medication but only after a sensible weight loss plan has not worked.

Confusing news for dieters this week, after the recommended daily calorie intake was increased by up to 16%. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition announced in a report that they believe the current calorie count given to guide people on healthy diets was too low and have suggested it should be bumped up by about 400 calories, the equivalent to a cheeseburger or two packs of crisps.

The report was leaked to The Times newspaper and The Grocer magazine.

Previously it was recommended that women eat 2,000 calories a day and men 2,500 but in their draft report, the SACN said that nutrition experts had underestimated the levels of physical activity in Britain and therefore misjudged their advice on energy intake. The existing guidelines were created in 1991.

The report is not yet official and is due to go through a 14-week consultation period before any final recommendations are made. If it is given the go-ahead, some foods which are marked as red or orange under the ‘traffic light’ system, meaning they take up a significant part of a person’s daily calorie intake, could be downgraded to receive a healthier rating.

However the report has been criticised, with the National Obesity Forum warning that it was a ‘dangerous assumption’ that adults could consume more calories each day. It is also thought that the Government and the Food Standards Agency will not be pleased, as it could be seen to send out a dangerous message when obesity levels are rising across Britain.

The criticism seems fair enough. There are so many mixed messages about dieting and weight loss coming from every quarter and lowering the calorie count will only serve to make the situation more confusing. With obesity being the burgeoning medical time bomb that it is, the last message that we should be giving out is that people should be eating more.  It may well be that physical activity is higher than originally estimated but we are not overweight as a nation because people are eating too little. This is quite a ridiculous proposal and should be dismissed out of hand given what we know about the nation's eating habits as a whole!

Pregnant women who are obese and live in a Somerset town are being forced to travel to a Bristol hospital, as the local facility can not cope with patients of their size.

The local hospital, Western General, said that as they only had a low-risk, midwife lead birth centre they could not offer a safe delivery to mothers with a BMI greater than 34. The Western Area health trust said that women were made aware of the policy at the beginning of their pregnancies.

The policy means that pregnant women who are obese will have to travel an extra 20 miles to give birth.

A spokesperson for the trust said that the ‘foremost concern’ was for the safety of the mothers and their unborn children. He pointed out that obese mothers were at a higher risk of bleeding during labour and were more likely to need an instrumental delivery or have complications during the labou>He added that mothers who gained more than 20kg during their pregnancy were also sent to the Bristol hospital.

A Western General representative said that their hospital was not equipped to deal with complications requiring specialist equipment, as their facilities were geared towards providing a more ‘money and more simple place to give birth’.

In a recent report by the North Somerset primary health care trust, it was revealed that over the last few years the number of people who are overweight or obese in the region has skyrocketed. They estimated that 18% of the population were obese and by 2013 this would have increased by 6,000.

The director of health Max Kammerline said that the trust were aware that obesity was a particularl problem for those in deprived areas and pointed to the Weston south area as having above-average levels of obesity.

It has been suggested that being obese as a teenager could increase someone’s chances of developing multiple sclerosis later in life.

Researchers from the Harvard School for Public Health examined data taken from nurses who were part of a large study into diet, lifestyle and health. They discovered that those who were obese, meaning they had a BMI of over 30, by the time they were 18 were twice more likely to develop the disease.

Of all the women who took part in the study, 593 were discovered to have multiple sclerosis. The progressive illness causes neurological damage, caused by the loss of nerve fibres and the protective sheath they provide in the brain and spinal cord.

The women had been asked to use a series of pictures to describe their body size at ages 5, 10 and 20. When the researchers compared their self-reported body shapes with the incidences of MS they found no link between obesity and the number of diagnosis of the illness. However this changed when they used BMI as a measure of obesity.

Previously studies have drawn links between low levels of Vitamin D and MS, and the Harvard scientists pointed out that obesity was linked to low vitamin D levels.

The team said that their findings supported the idea that adolescence was a crucial time for the development of disease and advised that educating teens about obesity and using methods to prevent teenage obesity could reduce the numbers of women being diagnosed with MS later in life.

Obesity rates are putting a severe strain on health services after rates of hospital admissions for the condition more than tripled over the last five years. Over the last year alone, there has been a rise of 60% in the number of people taken into hospital due to their weight.

The figures include patients being treated for conditions such as organ failure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. They also include surgical procedures to help patients lose weight, such as stomach stapling and gastric banding.

Procedures such as stomach stapling are known as bariatric surgery and were approved for the treatment of patients with a Body Mass Index of over 40 – or 35 if there are other health conditions – by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence in 2007.

Between 2008-2009, there were 8,085 admissions for obesity, with over half of those for obesity and the rest to treat conditions caused by excess weight.

The head of the NHS Information Centre Tim Straughan said that the dramatic increase in obesity-related admissions demonstrated the ‘growing impact’ obesity was having on the health of the nation, as well as the pressure it was putting on ‘limited NHS resources.’

The charity the National Obesity Forum has blamed the rise in bariatric surgeries on society looking for a quick fix for their weight problems. A representative said that as a society, we no longer tried diet and exercise as a solution to the problem and warned that increased demand for the procedure was going to stretch NHS capabilities.

Danish researchers believe that they have developed a new ‘diet injection’ which as well as being much more effective than current slimming pills on the market could also project against type II diabetes.

Patient were injected with liraglutide to combat diabetes but the results from the trials indicated that the drug makes patients twice as likely to lose weight as those who are taking orlistat, or Xenical.

Published in the journal the Lancet the results showed that the drug curbed hunger pangs as well as reducing risk factors for diabetes. However while  Xenical is in pill form, making it convenient to take, liraglutide needs to be injected daily as in pill form it would be broken down by the gut. It is also an expensive drug, costing £500 for six months of treatment.

In the trial, lead by a paid consultant of the pharmaceutical firm manufacturing the drug Professor Arne Astrup, three groups of patients in 19 hospitals were put on a diet which reduced their calorie content by 500 calories a day and told to exercise. One group were given orlistat, one group given liraglutide, and one group given a placebo.

Professor Astrup said that the drug mimics the action of a hormone found in the gut, GLP-1, which is released into the body after someone has eaten. It then tells the body to produce more insulin and acts as a satiety hormone, telling the brain to stop eating.

Over 20 weeks, over 3/4s of those given the injections lost more than 5% of their body weight, weight loss experienced by 44% of those taking orlistat and 30% of those taking the placebo.

Further tests are planned as the trial ran for a relatively short period, and the researchers need to establish the longer term ratio between risks and benefit. Health charity Weight Concern have said that while the development of good weight loss drugs is important, emphasis still needs to be on supporting people in changing their lifestyle and diet. Dr. George Bray from Louisana State University, who wrote the accompanying editorial in the Lancet,  said that it was not yet clear whether an injection would prove a “palatable” means of delivering weight loss medication but said he was optimistic that the potential of the new generation of weight loss medications would be fulfilled.

Medical experts have warned that depression can double someone’s chances of becoming obese. The researchers have said that the longer someone has the condition the greater their chances of developing life-threatening weight problems.

The findings have been published in the British Medical Journal and indicate that the correlation between depression and weight is due to those suffering from depression or anxiety being more likely to develop eating disorders.

Even just one episode of depression made someone 33% more likely to become obese, while those who at three different points of assessment were suffering from mental health problems were twice as likely to be overweight.

The scientists studied 4,363 civil servants from Britain between 1985 and 2004. All were between 35 and 55 years old and had their mental health assessed and their body mass index measures at regular points. Even when the side-effects of depression medication were taken into account there was still a strong link between their mental health and weight.

The researchers, from University College London, have called for further research to be done into the links between the two conditions in the wider population. In the same journal, an Australian team suggested that obese people were more likely to become depressed due to the social stigma attached to their size.

TV companies have long been under pressure from campaigners for allowing companies like Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Cadburys to sponsor their most popular programs, buying the time before and after every adbreak to promote their products to an often young and impressionable audience.

Now however one of the most popular programs for under-15s is to have an critic-proof sponsor – the government’s Change 4 Life campaign.  The government have decided to sponsor episodes of the satirical cartoon in an attempt to make children more aware of their message promoting healthy eating.

The cartoon features Homer Simpson, famous for his doughnut addiction and habit of chugging down can after can of beer. Officials apparently hope that families zoning out in front of the TV will see the Simpson family as a reflection of themselves and be pushed to take better care of their health.

They also approve of the way the animated family, despite their fairly dysfunctional ways, eat together round the kitchen table and support each other through their various tribulations (the episode when they get lost in the woods and nearly eaten by slavering wolves springs to mind there).

After the show was analysed, the health experts said that they thought skateboarding Simpson son Bart achieved the recommended 60 minutes of exercise a day, while his vegetarian sister Lisa probably consumed at least 5 fruits or vegetables a day.

The officials plan to use the slots to show a set of cartoon characters, created by the same company that made Wallace and Gromit, pretending to be the Simpson family. They will be sitting on the sofa eating pizza and junk food, which will ultimately disappear, to be replaced by fruit and vegetablesThe positive and negative aspects of the Simpson family have been acknowledged in the slogan for the £640,000 campaign, “Supporting the Simpsons: Sometimes.”

A new study has shown that those who gain excessive weight in middle age could be reducing their life expectancy by about 80% Researchers from the University of Warwick and the Harvard School of Public Health in the US have analysed data taken provided by US nurses and concluded that weight gain is a significant indicator of lifespan.

Published in the British Medical Journal , the scientists used information gathered on 17,000 women since 1976.  They discovered that women who were obese in their middle age had odds lower by 79% of healthy survival compared to women of a health weight.

The nurses were asked to fill in questionnaires on their lifestyle, weight, height and medical history. They were questioned every two years for over two decades and asked to update the scientists on their health and current lifestyle.

The report concluded that for every 1kg increase in weight there was from when a woman was 18, the chances of healthy survival decreased by 5%. They considered a woman to be ‘healthy’ if she reached 70 or over with no experience of a major chronic disease and associated surgery , such as cancer, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, or Parkinson’s disease.

They warned that women who were already overweight at 18 and gained 10kg or more in middle age were particularly at risk of premature death or ill-health.

Following on from the Weight Watchers survey into fat blindness, another slimming club, Slimming World, has published a survey indicating that up to 10 million Brits are unwilling or unable to acknowledge their weight issues.

In a survey carried out by the polling service, YouGov, fewer than one in ten people believed their extra pounds were a problem – but more than one in 4 people were clinically obese when measured.

More than 52% of the obese people surveyed said they thought they ate a healthy diet, further indicating that many people’s flawed perception of what constitutes a healthy weight or lifestyle extends to their food habits. Many people are so blind to their weight and body shape that they are not aware that they actually need to be on a weight loss diet rather than just maintaining the diet that they already have.

Slimming World has warned that the data shows that 1 in 4 obese people do not realise that their weight is putting their health at risk. Dr Jaqui Lavin, the head of nutrition at Slimming World, said that perceptions of what constitutes a weight problem were changing as the UK population got heavier.

She added that this was especially worrying as being obese was far more likely to cause someone to experience ill-health, citing statistics that the morbidly obese were 10 times more likely than someone of a healthy weight to describe their health as very poor, and that more than a third of the morbidly obese had high blood pressure.

New research has shown that childhood low self esteem can lead to being overweight as an adult. In 1970 6,500 participants were questioned about their self-esteem.

The children had their weight and height measured by nurses and then self reported the same details until they were 30. They also noted their emotional states.

Now they have been tracked down and weighed and the results showed that the children with lower self-worth tended to be fatter as adults. This was especially true for girls, while overall those who felt less in control of their lives, who worried often and who were unconfident in themselves were more likely to gain weight over the 20 years.

The researchers were from Kings College London and lead researcher Professor David Collier said of the results that they showed while obesity is regarded as a metabolic, medical disorder, emotional issues are also a risk factor. He added that the emotional problems experienced were not deep-seated, but rather anxiety and self-esteem issues within the normal range.

Another member of the team, Andrew Ternouth said that new government strategies to promote social and emotional aspects of learning and promote self-esteem were likely to have positive benefits physically as well as in other aspects of a child’s development.

Its not often we get to write about being heavier as a good thing, but scientists have said that those dreaded tree-trunk thighs may in fact be protecting you from major health problems. The new research discovered that people with thinner-than-average thighs may have a higher chance of developing heart problems or dying early.

The scientists from Copenhagen Univesity said that on average, most people’s thighs have a circumference of 22 inches, or 55 centimetres. People were most at risk if they had a thigh measurement of less than 18 inches, or 46.5 centimetres, while there was no added risk if the thighs were larger than 60 cm. The results held true even when the researchers took into account other risk factors, such as cholesterol levels.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, followed a group of Danish men and women for over 10 years. The participants had their height, weight, hips and waistline measured and the researchers calculated their overall body fat.

They also looked into their exercise levels, whether they smoked, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. During the ten years, the scientists recorded the incidence of heart disease and death. 257 men and 155 women died, 263 men and 140 women developed cardiovascular disease while 103 men and 34 developed heart disease.

The scientists said that those with the smallest thighs had twice as high a risk of developing heart problems. They suggested that this could be due to narrow thighs being associated with too little muscle mass, leading to the body not responding to insulin properly and therefore making Type 2 diabetes more likely, itself associated with heart disease. Low fat levels can also lead to adverse reactions to how the body breaks down food.

Various charities, such as the British Heart Foundation and the National Obesity Forum, have agreed that the research is interesting but that more research needs to be done.

A shocking report has revealed that the number of children being prescribed the slimming pills Reductil and Xenical has dramatically risen over the past ten years. Though the drugs are only meant to be prescribed to adults, since 1999 the number of prescriptions being written for under-18s has climbed 15-fold.

The study has been published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and examined the use of orlistat – the medical name for Xenical and sibutramine,the generic name for Reductil. It showed that many doctors despite being advised to only offer the medications to adults are prescribing off-license.

During the period studied, 452 under-18s were given 1,334, prescriptions. Most were for 14-year-olds, though 25 of the prescriptions were written for children under 12.

The researchers also discovered that most of the patients stopped taking the medications before they had time to have any impact on their excess weight. 45% of the youngsters stopped taking Xenical after only one month, while 25% of those prescribed Reductil also stopped using it after the same time.

It was not clear whether this was due to adverse side-effects or for other reasons. One of the lead researchers, Russell Viner, said they it was possible the diet pills had been given inappropriately. He also suggested that the children had expected them to deliver a “miracle quick fix’” and then when rapid weight loss did not happen, they grew disheartened and stopped taking them.

New research has shown that front-line NHS staff feel that there is nothing they can do to reduce levels of obesity amongst children. GPs and practice nurses reported that there were limits on what they could do to make an impact on a problem they described as being primarily social.

NHS staff said that a time pressures, parental reluctance to address their children’s problems and a lack of treatment options made their job so hard they had little effect. While Xenical and Reductil are fairly widely prescribed to obese adults by GPs, they are not recommended for use by under-18s.

Currently a little less than a third of adults in the UK are obese and that figure is expected to rise sharply over the next few years. About the same amount of children are also overweight – experts estimate that about 27% of them have weight problems.

Obesity is a medical problem and can have grave consequences for health, but NHS staff say that  there were usually more pressing problems to deal with when a child visits their doctor. The medical staff also said that unless the weight was directly related to the health problem that caused the visit, they felt uncomfortable bringing it up.

They also warned that when they do see a child face to face and spot a weight problem, a lack of follow-up services means that there is little that can be done to help.

Dr. Katrina Turner, who lead the study, said that the children visiting their GPs was only “the tip of the iceberg” and called for there to be a re-examination of healthy food, where children can play and how much exercise there is on the school curriculum.

A Department of Health spokesperson said that they did not expect GPs and other primary health care professionals to solve the problem of child obesity on their own.

New research has suggested that weight loss surgeries like gastric banding can also stop 8 out of 10 patients experiencing diabetes symptoms. It has been claimed that bariatric procedures, which include gastric bands, stomach stapling and gastric bypasses, can drastically cut the number of patients with obvious signs of Type 2 Diabetes.

Scientists from the University of Minnisota reported that 78.1% of patients with diabetes had ‘complete resolution’, while in 86.6% of patients their diabetes was improved or resolved.

The patients studied lost on average 38.5kg after the surgery, which they maintained for two years or more. The weight lost came to about 55.9% of their excess weight.

The study, which was presented at the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders conference in Paris, is the largest of its kind into the potential benefits of bariatric surgery.

However a leading charity Diabetes UK  has warned that people should not get too excited about the research. The care advisor for the charity Zoe Harrison said that though it showed bariatric surgery could have good results, any surgery was potentially risky.

She added that dramatic weight loss could lead to a reduction in people needing to take medicine to treat their diabetes and even to some people not needed their medication at all. However she denied that bariatric surgery could cure diabetes, as those people would still need to eat a balanced diet and exercise to manage their condition.

Charities also warned that diabetes patients might be tempted to look to weight-loss surgeries as a quick fix, rather than using diet and exercise to control the condition.

Data has shown that people are waiting for longer before seeking to lose weight. According to the slimming group Weight Watchers, the average weight at which people seek out their services has risen by 11% over the last two decades.

The report has lead to Britons being described as ‘fat blind’, as over the last two decades they have put on 18lbs more before deciding they need help to lose weight. The organisation said that Brits are less aware of how heavy they are getting and increasingly do not know how their weight could be affecting their health.

The slimming club records the starting weight of all new members who sign up to one of their weight-loss schemes. Over the time period on record, weight at the beginning has been steadily rising from 12.3 stones in 1989 to today’s average of 13.7 stones.

When read in terms of body mass index, the figure doctors use to decide whether someone is dangerously overweight, it has risen from 29.2 to 32, meaning that the average Weight Watchers member is already clinically obese by the time they join.

Weight Watchers themselves said that 90% of Brits were unable to identify a body that is obese, while 68% of those who are obese are unaware of their condition.

Their vice president, Mads Ryder, said the statistics showed that if people were unable to identify what an overweight or obese person looks like, it marked that we as a society are out of touch with healthy weights and body shapes.

A large, government-funded study has shown that rates of sleep apnoea in America are rising as the population becomes increasingly obese.

Seven institutions took part in the study, measuring the sleep and breathing patterns of over 6,400 people and monitoring them for the next 8 years. They discovered that adults over 40 who suffered from disrupted breathing during sleep were nearly 50% more likely to die than those with normal breathing.

According to the National Institute of Health, over 12 million Americans suffer from sleep apnoea, but only 1 in 5 are aware they have the condition. The condition is becoming more common because it can be caused by excess fat around the neck and throat, which clogs the airways and causes temporary blockages that forces people to gasp for air. As the population gets heavier, more people have excess fat around their throat.

The co-author of the study and chairman of the department of preventative medicine at the University of Southern California, Jonathan Samet, said that the American obesity epidemic was of grave concern. He said that as almost 65% of adults were obese or overweight, disordered sleep was becoming more common.

Men are more likely to experience sleep apnoea than women by about 15% and the most common cause of death was heart disease.

Samet advised that anyone who snores at night and is sleepy during the day should consult their doctor. He added that losing weight or taking medication to boost the supply of oxygen to the body in the night could reduce the risk of associated heart problems.

Andy Burnham has said that there needs to be a sea-change in how Britons approach physical activity. After research showed the UK was one of the least active countries in Europe, the health minister said that Brits needed to face up to the challenge of doing more exercise.

We were 21^st out of 31, falling behind countries like Bulgaria and Latria in the chart showing how regularly populations engaged in regular exercise. The recommended amount of exercise we should be doing is 1 hour a day for children, and 30 minutes daily for adults.

However, a survey performed for the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy showed that two-thirds of UK residents were not managing to meet this target, with 1/5^th saying they exercised once a month or less.

Mr Burnham said that while as a nation we love sport, we are just not doing enough of it. He added that while we had already set coming fourth in the 2012 Olympics as a goal, he wanted us to get to number 4 in the league of physical activity in the next 10 years.

His comments come as the government launched a number of initiatives to get Britain healthier as part of their Change4Life program. These included the rather dubious announcement that Arlene Phillips, the judge sacked by the BBC for apparently being too old to present Strictly Come Dancing, was to join the Dance Champions Group.

A £1m cash injection into swimming has also been set aside to help councils provide free swims.

He also said that people on sickness benefit should be exercising, as this could lead to significant benefits for the economy. Each minute, £3000 is spent on treating Type 2 diabetes, a condition frequently caused by obesity.

A mother who had a gastric band operation to protect her daughter has tragically died. 30-year old Kerry Greaves wanted to stop her daughter being bullied due to her mother’s weight when she was picked up at the school gates. At 18-stone, she was desperate to shed the weight.

However severe complications after the surgery meant that her stomach failed to heal after the procedure and in spite of 14 further operations to save her life, she died of organ failure.

Her mother, Anne, said that Kerry was encouraged to have the procedure after she learnt that friends had had it done with success. Anne said that though her daughter had tried Weight Watchers, Slim Fast and other diets, she only ever lost a bit.

With her 3-year old Melissa starting school next year, though she herself had never been teased for her weight she was concerned her daughter might be “picked on” for having a big mum, her number one reason for getting the extreme procedure done.

Each year, thousands of obese people get some kind of bariatric surgery done. These can rang from gastric banding, where a band is fitted around the upper part of the stomach to shrink it, to gastric balloon insertion, where a balloon is inflated in the belly, again to reduce its size.

The mortality rate for the operation is 1 in 2,000. While some NHS trusts will pay for the procedure, some people are so desperate to lose weight they are willing to pay privately or even go abroad.

Anne Greaves said that if anyone was thinking of getting the procedure done, she would say to them, “Find more pride in yourself and don’t do it.”

The food watchdog has advised that cutting the size of chocolate bars would go a long way to reducing the rate of obesity in the UK.  The Food Standards Agency has said that manufacturers should reduce the size of their products by a fifth to minimise calorie intake.

The regulator has proposed that the standard size of a chocolate bar be no larger than 50g. They have also  asked firms like Cadburys to sell the ‘fun-size’ versions of their treats singly, rather than in multi-bar bags.

There have also been suggestions that fizzy-drink cans should over the next six years be made smaller. After a consultation with the food industry, it was agreed that within three years, added drink sugar levels should be reduced by 4%, with experts hoping that this will help the public gradually get weaned off sweet drinks without noticing the sugar content has been reduced.

A spokeswoman from the agency has denied that the measures are ‘nannying’ people, or telling people what they should eat. She said that the FSA want to make it easier for people to eat healthily and make good food choices.

While the consultation was aiming to encourage food companies to take voluntary action to reduce sizes and sugar content, it is possible that if they fail to respond the government may threaten to legislate.

Personally, I think the proposed measures sound excellent. When I eat a chocolate bar, I am eating it not to fill myself up but for the pleasure of treating myself, for the loveliness of the first bite. I sincerely doubt I would notice if the Mars or Twix was smaller, but my bottom certainly would. Okay, it is a little bit ‘nannyish’ but with 60% of Brits likely to be dangerously fat by 2050, the UK needs a bit of nannying when it comes to their diet.  

Over the past 10 years, American-style coffee houses have popped up on every single high street in Britain. Skinny lattes, frappucinos, chai lattes - they have become a common part of British life, whether you prefer Starbucks, Nero or Costa.

In the summer, iced coffees are some of the biggest sellers for the coffee chains. However a charity has warned that the seemingly harmless cold drinks can contain as many calories as a full meal. The World Cancer Research Fund conducted a survey into the iced coffees sold by the most popular chains and discovered that the majority of iced drinks contained over 200 calories.

The worst offender was the new venti dark berry mocha frappuncino, which Starbucks started selling this summer. It has 561 calories in it, over a quarter of a woman’s recommended daily calorie intake and over a third of what dieters should be aiming for.

Dr Rachel Thompson, the science program manager at the WCRF, called the calorie content of the drink “alarming”. The WTCF launched the survey in response to the growing evidence that obesity is a leading cause of cancer in the Western world. They have estimated that 19,000 cases of cancer each year could be avoided if people shed their excess weight.

Dr. Thompson said that while the occasional iced coffee was fine as a treat, drinkers should opt for unsweetened coffee, ask for skimmed milk and avoid the creams and syrups that the coffee houses offer.

In 2007 Starbucks changed the milk it uses by default from full-fat to 2% fat and has begun tests into a low-calorie frappucino recipe. Both Costa and Nero offer the full calorie content of their products on their websites.

A grandfather who was warned he would die unless he lost enough weight to make him eligible for life-saving surgery has astonished doctors by losing 11stone in 6 months. Idris Lewis weighed almost 27 stone and in January was told that due to his weight, surgeons could not perform heart surgery, without which they gave him a year to live.

Mr Lewis was so determined to give himself a fighting chance at survival that he embarked on an extreme diet, where he stopped eating solids and lived on fluids entirely. He has subsisted on nothing but mineral water and nutritionally-balanced milkshakes for the past six months in an effort to reach the target weight set by his surgeon in time for the end of July.

He explained that he decided to take such dramatic steps after his doctor made him realise he only had two choices – “diet or die”. He said that learning this was the only incentive he needed to lose the extra weight.

Amazingly, Mr. Lewis said he had not missed solid food, though sometimes he sees an advert for roast chicken or steak and thinks it looks good. He said this was just ‘desire’, not need. Rather depressingly, he told journalists that he got variation in his diet by alternating between mineral and tap water.

He is overjoyed that he has now been told that he can have the operation in October and plans to end the diet in two weeks, when he will slowly start to reintroduce food into his life.

While this story has shown what people can do with determination, it also is fairly scary that it took the prospect of death to convince Mr. Lewis to shed the extra pounds. With 1 in 3 Brits expected to be dangerously overweight by 2012, it seems probably that many of those people will not be able to show the same determination – and their stories will not end so happily.

The British Retail Consortium today praised the efforts of UK shops to help in the fight against obesity.  The group said that its members were ensuring that customers were receiving better information about the food available and were being offered healthier choices.

A report commissioned by the group, representing shops all over the UK, said that Britain was the leading country in Europe when it came to putting information about nutritional content on the packaging of food. It also praised retailers who had offered price discounts on fruit and vegetables, claiming this encouraged more people to eat healthily. The report finally pointed out that companies were now starting to offer varied portion sizes.

Companies that took part on the report, entitled British Retailing: A Commitment to Health included Asda, Burger King, Boots, Marks and Spencer and McDonalds. Stephen Robertson, the director general of the British Retail Consortium, said that the report showed the companies could voluntarily make differences to the nation’s eating habits without laws forcing them to do so, saying that shops were motivated by customer demand and increased competition to cement their healthy credentials. Many businesses have been nervous that more stringent regulation will soon be introduced forcing them to reduce salt content and help customers make healthy choices when shopping.

According to a new study it might be more beneficial to let our children enjoy a lie in than to force them on to the sports field. The study from Université Laval in Quebec City claims to have discovered a direct link between obesity in children and the length of time they spend sleeping.

The Research suggested those children who spent less than 10 hours a night sleeping were 3.5 times more likely to become overweight than those who slept for 12 hours or more.

Four hundred and twenty two students, aged 5 to 10, took part in the study during which their height, weight and waist size were monitored and the results were certainly surprising.

The study established that 20 percent of the boys and 24 percent of the girls were ‘overweight’ (based on their BMI) and that the amount of time spent sleeping was the single largest factor in this. In fact, it had more impact than parental obesity, parents' level of education, family income, time spent in front of the TV or computer or time doing regular physical activity.

The results of the study are likely to raise some eyebrows. Time spent snoozing has rarely been regarded as beneficial to maintaining a healthy weight. In fact many people might think quite the opposite.

When we don’t get enough sleep the levels of the hormone leptin, which stimulates the metabolism and reduces our appetite, is reduced. In the same way, lack of sleep also increases the concentration of ghrelin in our bodies, which increases our appetite.

The study concludes that the recognition of the importance of enough sleep is imperative in fighting child obesity.

Researchers from the World Cancer Research Fund have said that obesity is a far bigger cause of cancer than previously estimated. Their study says that of 7 main cancers (breast, pancreas, kidney, womb lining, gall bladder, bowel and oesophagus) 17% of cases are linked to excess fat.

Previous figures released by the charity Cancer Research UK were 50% lower than these new estimates. The World Cancer Research Fund says that over the past ten years, evidence linking cancer and being overweight have become much stronger. Professor Martin Wiseman, medical advisor to the charity, warned that as the number of obese patients increases, the problem is only going to worsen.

A second survey from the World Health Organisation has shed light why the West is having such difficulty keeping weight at normal levels. Comparing U.S data from the 1970s to the early years at the start of the new millennium, they discovered that while exercise levels have barely changed, calorie intake has increased by 500 calories a day.

Professor Wiseman suggested that as a survey had recently shown that 40% of people were unaware of the danger that their weight could lead to cancer, more needed to be done to educate people about the associated risks of weight. The charity has said that people should be aiming for a Body Mass Index, the measure of obesity calculated by using a combination of height to weight, of between 18.5 to 24.9.

Environmental experts have warned that obesity is not only damaging the nation’s health but is also threatening the environment. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have said that the more we are eating, the greater the impact on the changing climate - and in the West, food consumption has escalated hugely over the past 20 years. Not only is a lot of energy being expended to meet growing demand for food, but as we get fatter we are choosing cars over public transport or walking.

Alarm has been raised after a leading cancer specialist warned that if there is not a dramatic change in the number of people who smoke and are obese the NHS may have to start discriminating about the treatment it provides.

Professor John Smythe, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Edinburgh said in a speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival that doctors would soon need to make tough decisions about the types of drugs, treatments and screenings made available when faced with what he called ‘relentless’ pressure from public expectation and limited funding. Highlighting the moral dilemma facing the medical world over issues such as obesity, smoking and drugs, he argued that such factors needed to be taken into consideration when a patient came forward seeking medical treatment. He warned that the problem ‘can no longer be ignored. Fast forward five years and this problem is only going to get worse.”

Currently, it is estimated that 13,000 people a year could avoid cancer were their body weight lower, making obesity the second most common cause of cancer after tobacco. Cigarettes are believed to be responsible for around 90% of all cases of lung cancer, as well as being strongly associated with other illnesses such as pancreatic cancer and heart disease. Experts have already warned that rising levels of obesity may cause such an increase in costs to the NHS that the system may be entirely crippled within 25 years.

Professor Smythe warned that though medical advances were continuing and public expectation of available treatments was high, the current economic climate, an aging population and decreasing numbers of tax-payers meant that the government was unable to provide some potential treatments. His words resonated with recent cases of cancer-sufferers forced to pay privately for expensive cancer drugs not offered by some primary health care trusts, which have received large amounts of media attention.

Recently, the Scottish NHS u-turned on the issue of patients paying for some drugs not offered by the NHS without meeting the entire cost of their treatment; a move some fear will lead to a two-tier ‘top-up’ system. Professor Smythe’s words seem to suggest that some medical quarters believe this ‘topping-up’ could become unavoidable for those whose lifestyles are believed to have contributed to their illness. A Scottish government spokesman refused to be drawn into the debate, saying, “We welcome all contributions to the debate about shaping our future healthcare system.”

Obesity levels have risen to such an extent that the NHS is struggling to meet the associated costs, figures obtained by GP newspaper suggest. Over the past three years, one in 6 primary health care trusts has seen a seven-fold increase in spending on obesity. The costs have been blamed not only on a heightened demand for specialist bariatric surgeries to combat obesity but on the costs of specialist equipment needed to provide care for the obese. Specialist equipment purchased included larger examination couches and larger hospital gowns.

The report comes on top of other figures released earlier in the year revealing the pressure being placed on public care services. The fire services are being called out fairly regularly to help move obese patients, in one case from one hospital bed to another. Prescriptions for slimming tablets are also steadily rising; last figures released, from 2007, showed they were costing the NHS £1m a week.

There was a 40% increase in the numbers of bariatric surgeries done in 2007-2008, compared with the year before, though 25% of PCTS have also refused funding for bariatric surgeries. Some experts have said that severely obese patients are being denied the surgeries though they are generally proved to be effective in extreme cases. David Haslam, a GP and the clinical director of the National Obesity Forum, believes that though patients were meeting criteria for surgeries recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellent (NICE),“PCTs are in the habit of adding extra barriers over and above NICE.”He said, “PCTs are delighted to find any excuse to turn down surgery, despite the fact that it is among the most clinically effective, and cost effective procedures in any field of medicine.”

A new article published in this month’s edition of The Milbank Quarterly has illuminated how food prices can affect the health and weight of a nation and has suggested that pricing interventions could have a significant impact on obesity levels. The report also showed that societal groups that are most vulnerable – such as the poor, children, adolescents and those already struggling with weight – would show the greatest response to changes in food pricing.

The authors of the report, Lisa Powell and Frank J. Chaloupka of the University of Chicago, examined research published between 1990 and 2008 that related to weight and BMI when combined with taxation and prices. They have suggested that a rise in the price of unhealthy foods, such as sugary snacks and fast food, would result in a lower body weight and reduction in the likelihood of obesity. They concluded that while small taxes on such foods would be unlikely to affect weight outcomes, larger interventions would have a measurable effect.

In the U.K there have already been calls for a ‘chocolate tax’ and levies on foods such as Big Macs. Scotland’s leading cancer specialist Dr. Anna Gregor in May suggested that a 2% tax on fast food could encourage a healthier diet, saying that since it was already known that “cigarette pricing is one of the most useful ways of modifying smoking habits...(she) would be interested to see whether altering Big Mac prices would modify eating habits.” Last week the nutritionist Dr. David Walker claimed chocolate was a major factor in the obesity epidemic and that a tax on chocolate products could make a difference. When put to the vote at the British Medical Association’s meeting, the proposal was narrowly lost by only two votes.

However, a spokesman from the charity Diabetes U.K, which is intimately concerned with the obesity crisis as it is causing diabetes rates to increase sharply, dismissed the idea of a food tax. “We don’t believe a chocolate tax is the right approach”, a spokesperson said, “Education and information are needed to help make the right food choices.”

The idea of taxing fatty food is gaining ground but is likely to meet with strong opposition from food manufacturers such as Cadburys and Coca-Cola, who are already struggling to demonstrate that their products should not be demonised for the current problems. The article’s authors have recommended that further detailed research be done to allow strong policy conclusions to be reached as to the effectiveness of pricing interventions to reduce obesity.

A group of experts from Oxford University have published findings warning that being morbidly obese is as detrimental to life expectancy as a lifetime’s smoking. The study, published in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet, compiled data on nearly 1 million people from all over the world. It showed that obesity reduced lifespan by about three years, rising to ten years in extreme cases.

Severe obesity is calculated as being when someone has a BMI (the measure of weight derived from comparing weight to height) of between 40 and 50. About 2% of the UK population fall into this category, while a further one in four adults is moderately obese. The researchers believe that amongst the middle-aged, up to 1 in 4 heart attacks or strokes and 1 in 16 cancer deaths are attributable to weight.

The scientists warned that as the middle-aged were at particular risk, it was necessary to take preventative action before the weight was gained, as it was far more difficult to lose once middle-aged spread had started. Cancer and heart charities have greeted the study positively, with the British Heart Foundation (who supported the study) not only advocating individuals maintaining a healthy weight themselves but supporting recent government initiatives. Professor Pete Weissberg said, “... this study emphasises the importance of public health measures, such as the recently launched Change 4 Life campaign, as part of a raft of Government initiatives that will be needed to reduce the nation's weight."

Shocking figures obtained by the Conservatives have revealed exactly how many times during the past year fire crews have been called to help move obese patients – 1,780. 75% of those calls came from the NHS, according to the data gathered by the Tories after a freedom of information request was granted by 37 out of the 44 UK fire authorities.

Essex had the most call-outs, reaching 390 in total. Their Chief Fire Officer, David Johnson, made the fair point that the fire service had no option but to respond to these calls, as he could not “imagine for a minute that anyone would suggest that we leave people lying on the floor, stuck in their baths or in bed upstairs because of their size." He also made the excellent point that though it was impossible to legislate for the number of calls received, the calls were indicators of a wider social issue.

The fire service had been required to assist in a wide variety of instances, from removing corpses to moving people after heart attacks. In Oxfordshire a man was removed via a window which then had to be refitted, while in Kent the service came to help a 25 stone woman who became stuck in the bath. There was even an incident in Tyne and Wear where assistance was required just to move one patient from one hospital bed to another.

While the cases are fairly appalling, the Ambulance Service Network have reminded us that seen in light of the total number of call-outs the idea that firemen and women spend all their time hoisting fat people out of the bath is as “untrue...as the stereotype...of fire crews rescuing cats up trees.” The National Obesity Service however described the callouts as a “total misuse of the fire service”.

If you are overweight, the one person you might expect to treat you fairly and in an unbiased manner is your dietician. But researchers at Yale University say that even amongst dieticians there is a pronounced weight bias. The research, which was published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, supports findings in the January edition of Obesity that suggested those who were overweight were stigmatised in all areas of their life, including the workplace, school, in health care and at home.

The researchers examined the attitudes of 182 dietitic students towards obese patients and the results are fairly shocking. 40% of students said they believed the overweight were lacking in willpower and were self-indulgent and lazy, while the majority agreed that obese individuals had poor self control and self-esteem. Only 2% expressed positive or neutral attitudes towards the overweight.

This particular research is especially alarming as clearly dieticians have extended and frequent contact with patients struggling with their weight, not to mention being required to do extensive counselling with them to help them reduce their BMI. A strong bias and tendancy to pre-judge could severely impact on patient care.

The authors of the study, Rebecca Puhl and Chelsea Heuer , of the centre for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, and Christopher Wharton, of Arizona State University, have pointed to the similarities between these findings and other attitudes reported by a variety of health care providers. They write, “Our findings are worrisome because the quality of patient care can be compromised by negative provider attitudes and bias. There is a clear need to address this issue in training of health care professionals”.

New research has been published providing further information on the link between obesity and a genetic predisposition to weight gain. Scientists have suspected for some time that there is a gene which will program our bodies as to how much weight we put on, the FTO gene. It is believed that people with a high-risk type of gene can weigh up to 3kg more than those without the gene. The new study, published in the online journal Nature, seems to indicate that this gene controls metabolic rates.

Scientists from the University of Dusseldorf examined mice to see what impact the gene had on the rate at which they burned off calories from food. They found that those mice that did not have the gene remained thin, despite eating a lot and not being active. They also discovered that those missing the FTO gene had retarded growth after birth because they were burning up energy at a much faster rate.

It had previously been thought that the FTO gene controlled food intake and appetite but the findings imply that this may have been too simplistic an explanation. An expert in metabolism at Cambridge University, Professor Stephen O’Rahilly, said it was a ‘bit puzzling’ as though other recent studies had had shown the gene to impact on food consumption it did not impact on the speed at which food was burned off. He added “This work provides a crucial piece of evidence supporting the notion that the FTO gene itself is likely to be involved in the effects of common human genetic variants on body fat."

It is hoped that as more is learnt about the FTO gene new treatments will result, helping to combat the global obesity crisis.

It is believed that in the UK, 1 in 6 pregnant women are obese, but fears have now been raised that a mother’s weight can have a significant impact on the health of their unborn child, with pregnant mothers putting their babies at risk of a range of illnesses and defects.

A review of 39 separate medical studies, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has shown that their babies are twice as likely to suffer from spina bifida, where the spinal cord is incomplete. There is a 30% greater chance that they will have a heart defect and the possibility of being born with a cleft palate increases by 20%. A separate study has also shown that over the past 10 years, deaths during pregnancy from heart disease have doubled, mainly due to an increase in obesity amongst expectant mothers, and that doctors regularly miss warning signs for heart problems during pregnancy.

The review was published just as scientists and experts called on the Government to launch a programme targeted at women of child-bearing age, as well as identifying risk factors during pregnancy to ensure early diagnosis of heart problems in mothers-to-be. The president of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Obstetrics and Gynaecology section, Professor Phillip Steer, commented: “We've had warnings on cigarette packets telling us that smoking can harm the unborn baby as well as the mother. But there seems to be little effort made to warn mothers about the risk obesity poses to mother and child."

The Food Standards Agency, which acts as a watchdog over the eating habits of the UK, has today launched a campaign to alert us to the dangers of eating too much saturated fat, which surveys suggest at least 20% of us are doing. Research has led some scientists to estimate that over a lifetime, we are each consuming 1000 pints of saturated fat.

The agency has commissioned adverts depicting a grease-filled sink, clogged up with a month’s worth of fat with the slogan “If this is what it’s doing to this pipe, imagine what it’s doing to yours.” They believe that while we are aware that saturated fat is bad, we do not make the connection between what we are eating and the associated risk of heart disease. Even one cheese sandwich and two slices of buttered toast would take you over your daily limit. Saturated fat is known as “hard fat”, found mainly in products derived from animals such as full- fat cheese, red meat and butter, and raised the amount of the bad cholesterol LDL in our blood stream. LDL causes fatty plaques to build up in the arteries and can lead to heart disease and strokes.

The FSA hopes to focus on women aged between 25 -60, who are not only believed to be most likely to change their behaviour but are generally the main food shoppers in their household. The FSA’s chief executive has also offered ways for us to cut down the amount of saturated and trans-fats we eat, describing how he “ learned to cut down cheese by grating it or using a stronger flavour and ... cut down to 1 per cent milk rather than semi-skimmed". The campaign is also encouraging us to grill our food rather than fry it, switch from butter to polyunsaturated spreads and use more vegetable oil in cooking.

A good way to check how much fat you have consumed is to look at the fat ratio per 100g, which is the percent of fat contained, as you should not be exceeding 11% of fat per day. If you check out the fat content on some of the foods you regularly eat, you will probably be shocked; I certainly wasn’t aware of how much fat I was consuming!

As for the ad itself – will it work? All I can say is personally I found it fairly repulsive and I’m now feeling wildly guilty about the croissant I had for breakfast.

 You can look at it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7878680.stm

This is actually slightly old news – we’ve written about it a few times in the blog before – but scientists are claiming that you may be able to catch obesity like a cold and have received a massive amount of publicity after a star turn on the BBC program Horizon, shown yesterday night. The scientists claim that there is a highly infectious virus named adenovirus, which attacks tissue and causes fat cells to multiply, causing weight gain. The virus can apparently be spread through coughs or unwashed hands.

The researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Company in the U.S found that those animals infected with the virus gained weight faster, even though they were eating the same amount as the healthy animals. Investigations into humans suggest that almost a third of obese adults carry the virus, compared to 11% of healthy individuals who do.

Professor Dhurandar, who led the study claimed that the virus “... goes to the lungs and spreads throughout the body. It goes to various organs and tissues such as the liver, kidney, brain and fat tissue”. He also said that people could remain infected for up to three months and experience the effects long after their cough or cold has disappeared.

Various obesity charities have repudiated the theory that the virus might be partly responsible for the UK’s obesity epidemic. Dr Ian Campbell, director of the charity Weight Concern, pointed out that over time our eating habits had undergone a massive change that a virus could not be responsible for, blaming “commercial expansion of companies making unhealthy foods”.

Professor Dhurandhar hopes that a vaccine for the virus might be ready for testing within the next five or ten years but reminded viewers that fat may have many other causes, making it pointless to try and avoid infection.

When I was watching the programme I just thought, hang on, this is a bit strange. Nobody at my gym seems to have this virus, nor do the people that I see running round the park in the morning but then up the road at McDonalds there seems to be an epidemic...

If you missed yesterdays’ Horizon, titled “Why are thin people fat?” you can watch it again on IPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hbsk2/b00hbnv5/Horizon_Why_Are_Thin_People_Not_Fat/ )

As we already know – thanks to the numerous newspaper columnists, obesity experts and NHS managers gloomily informing us – the NHS is going to go bankrupt because our nation is growing so spectacularly porky. So, in an attempt to avert this catastrophe, there is a new trial scheme, launched this week in Kent, to pay the obese to lose weight. The thinking behind this would seem to be that five hundred-odd pounds is better spent now, if it averts thousands of pounds spent later on the same patient when they develop diabetes, heart problems or cancer. Patients could receive up to £425, with half the money being doled out each time a significant amount is lost and half given six months later when the weight has been kept off.

Not unnaturally, the scheme has roused quite a lot of anger from various quarters. Ann Widdecombe, the Tory MP who achieved slightly more notoriety than usually granted to ministers when she took part in ITV’s Celebrity Fit Club, has questioned whether the government should be spending money on weight loss at a time when cancer sufferers are struggling to get certain drugs. The Tax Payer’s Association has also been heavily critical of the trial, arguing that “'People pay their taxes for the sick to be treated, not for the nanny state to bribe them to do something they should have done off their own bat. When people who are ill through no fault of their own are struggling to get appointments and drugs, it's unfair for money to be allocated to people who simply need to choose to exercise more and eat less.”

Shocking statistics have been published revealing that one person is diagnosed with diabetes every three minutes, most as a consequence of poor lifestyle and weight problems. For the past few years, we have been warned that the consequences of Britain’s obesity problem are about to make themselves very apparent - and that point seems to have now been reached. Official figures revealed by charity Diabetes UK have shown that of the staggering number of people developing the illness - 150,000 cases last year - most of them were middle aged and have type 2 diabetes, linked to obesity caused by lifestyle. This specific form of diabetes can have extremely serious complications, including blindness, amputation and heart attack.

The figures are particularly disturbing because they show a 50,000 increase from the year before, indicating that the nation’s habits are getting worse. Doctors have warned that the true impact of this crisis will not be revealed for some years yet, as the vast numbers of patients currently developing weight-related illnesses are not yet at the point where their conditions lead to death. The director of the National Obesity Forum, Dr. David Haslam, is unhopeful for the future: “The cynics have been saying we are not seeing the rises in premature deaths that people like me have been warning about.

But that is because the obesity epidemic only really started about 30 years ago, meaning people have not yet reached the age where they will die prematurely. What these figures clearly show is that these premature deaths will come. I hope they will bring it home to people that losing weight is not just about looking good.”

The Health Department has claimed that the rise in diabetes cases is partly due to an ageing population. While this may be true - the prevalence of middle-aged sufferers seems to support the theory - it doesn’t really change the bleak future faced by millions. The government has recently launched it multi-million pound campaign Change for Life, geared at encouraging us to live well, exercise and shun the junk food. It is to be hoped its impact will be rapid and striking.

Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb has warned that the NHS will face bankruptcy unless radical action is taken to stop the seemingly relentless increase in UK obesity. Research published yesterday by a team from University College London indicates that by 2012, 1 in 3 adults will be obese. At least there will be delicious irony in watching the Prime Minister welcoming all those wildly healthy athletes to our shores, while simultaneously trying to deal with the millions of obese Brits too unwell to even run to the bus stop.

Already, 9,000 adults die each year from illnesses related to obesity. There has been a big shift in focus towards the rates of obesity in children. Currently, when children first start attending school, roughly 10% of them are overweight. By the time they are eleven, this has increased to 33%. In mid-September the government announced their “Change4Life” scheme to encourage families to lead healthier lives, into which they are investing £375m. This will put a big focus on ‘social marketing’, though the NHS’ approach to marketing campaigns was yesterday heavily criticised by think tank The King’s Fund.

The researchers have warned that at least half of those affected will be from poor or disadvantaged households, meaning the gap between rich and poor will expand hugely. This is perhaps no surprise, considering how the rich have better access to facilities promoting a healthier lifestyle. It is considerably easier to exercise when your private gym is round the corner and your personal trainer is waiting. Similarly, it is very understandable why a parent on a limited budget would, after a 12 hour working day, continue to bung a cheap ready meal in the oven, rather than use their evening to buy ingredients and prepare a meal from scratch.

Emphasis on changing the habits of the next generation is right, for they need to see exercise and cooking healthily not as choices, but an unmissable part of the daily routine. Otherwise, the Olympics will finish, billions will have been spent, yet Brits nationwide will be too overweight to experience sport other than through their television screens.

Health care think tank The King’s Fund has slammed the government for wasting money on ineffective campaigns to curb obesity and smoking. In a paper entitled “Kicking Bad Habits”, summing up a year’s worth of research into government strategies to overcome obesity and nicotine addiction in the UK, the charitable foundation claimed that “The NHS will fail to tackle the rising tide of obesity and tobacco related illnesses unless it adopts more sophisticated techniques” .

A new study has shed light on the eating patterns that can develop in already obese patients making them more likely to overeat. Researchers at Penn State Medical College have demonstrated a link between the tongue, the ability to taste sweet foods and the likelihood of developing obesity. Previous studies have shown that the obese have a decreased sensitivity to sweet foods. The researchers took rats with this taste insensitivity associated with the overweight, and compared their eating habits with lean, healthy rats. They discovered that while the OELFT rats (those with the damaged taste) started out slim, they began gaining weight, apparently because the signal that the brain receives telling it that the body is satisfied was not being sent.

The Online Clinic blog has brought you many news stories about the latest developments in anti obesity treatments. A statistic that we often cite is the fact that one in four women and one in five men in the United Kingdom are now clinically obese and the number is rising.  We have discussed the various health consequences that arise from this worrying statistic and have brought you news on all the drug trials that are underway developing new medications to treat this growing problem. There are, however, more practical implications to what has been termed ‘the obesity epidemic’.

We have known for many years that a woman who is in good health will find it easier to conceive and will also have fewer problems in pregnancy than a woman who does not have a healthy lifestyle. Factors including diet, exercise, weight, alcohol intake and whether or not she smokes will all factor into the ease with which she conception and the smoothness of the pregnancy. It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that the health and lifestyle choices of men also have a considerable bearing on whether or not a woman will conceive.

A new study has suggested that an antibody which specifically targets a hormone responsible for hunger might be a new way to tackle the obesity epidemic. The announcement seems to follow a growing trend which seeks to find new ways to prevent obesity rather than attempting to treat it.

It is a common misconception that people who are overweight or obese enjoy eating or certainly enjoy the sensation that eating arouses in them. The notion of ‘comfort eating’ suggests that food is able to make someone feel satisfied and happier. New research published this week by scientists in the USA, however, suggests that the opposite may be true. The report, published in Scientific Journal Today, suggests that people who are overweight or obese may be that way as a result of never achieving any sense of satisfaction through eating!

Here on The Online Clinic news blog we endeavour to cover all the latest news stories on weight loss and weight loss treatments. Whether it be a story about the media furore which surrounded the revelation that Fern Britton had been fitted with a gastric band, the terrible story of a young woman who died after taking illegal weight loss pills bought on the internet or the latest developments in medical research and treatments for weight loss, you will find them on this blog.