Free Republic

Obesity is more dangerous than smoking and will dramatically shorten the lives of millions, a landmark study has found. While smoking reduces life by an average of ten years, the research says being seriously overweight can cut life expectancy by as much as 13 years. The Foresight report, written by 250 leading scientists, says Britain's obesity crisis is so severe that it would take at least 30 years to reverse. If current trends continue, by 2050 about 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children in the UK will be clinically obese...

For every four adults in the world who are malnourished five more are overweight, 30 percent of them clinically obese, according to the World Health Organization. The scourge of obesity, bringing in its train a host of health and economic problems that could one day cripple economies, is more prevalent in some countries than others, but still constitutes a global epidemic, says WHO. A billion people out of the world's six billion population are now considered overweight, compared with 800 million who do not have enough to eat. Some 2,000 health experts gather in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday for...