LONDON - Israel, Malta, Turkey, and the UK have the most obese people per capita in the Europe region in what amounted to an "epidemic", the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a report Tuesday.
Some 59 percent of European adults are overweight or obese as well as eight percent of children under five. Obesity in Europe was still not as bad as in the Americas, bit was "escalating", the WHO said.
Britain is on track to be the fattest nation in Europe in a decade, with takeaway companies and sedentary lifestyles being blamed.
An expert from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that, by the early 2030s, 37% of British men and women are expected to be obese. Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, the WHO lead for non-communicable diseases in Europe, told The Daily Mirror that the UK was adopting a lifestyle with “more and more digital screen time” and highlighted the prevalence of food delivery services such as Deliveroo and Just Eat.
Obesity in childhood has been linked to multiple health problems in later life by a new study from University College London (UCL).
The research suggested that more than a third of middle-aged adults have multiple health problems, such as recurrent back problems, mental ill-health, high blood pressure, diabetes and high-risk drinking – with an increased risk for people who were overweight or obese by the age of ten.
Researchers from UCL have been tracking almost 8,000 “Generation X” adults since they were born and found that 34% aged between 46 and 48 have two or more long-term health conditions, reports The Telegraph.
