Abundant rich food, too little exercise, and lack of will on the part of policymakers could swell the number of obese Britons to a staggering 26 million by 2030, according to the latest forecast.
If current trends continue, the size of the clinically obese population in the UK will increase by 11 million over the next two decades, experts predict.
The resulting extra cost burden on health services coping with obesity–linked problems such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer would be £2 billion per year. This represents an overall increase in health spending of two per cent.
In the worst case scenario, almost half of adult men in the UK could be obese by 2030. Obesity prevalence among UK men is forecast to rise from 26 per cent to between 41 – 48 per cent.
The proportion of obese women is predicted to increase from 26 per cent to 35 to 43 per cent.
In the US, which along with the UK has the highest obesity rates in the developed world, the prognosis is even worse.
Continuation of current trends is expected to see 65 million additional obese adults in the US by 2030, raising the nation’s total to 164 million. Health spending in the US would increase by $66 billion US, or 2.6 per cent.
The figures, published in The Lancet medical journal, were produced by an international team including leading British epidemiologist Klim McPherson, professor at the Oxford University.
The researchers constructed historic trends using 20 years of data from the US and UK and plotted their likely future course.
Their modelling showed that the obesity health burden would accelerate as a result of the ageing population.
In the UK, rising obesity rates were predicted to lead to an extra 668,000 cases of diabetes, 461,000 of heart disease, and 130,000 of cancer over the next 20 years.
The experts agreed that positive action on the part of policymakers was necessary – for instance, by imposing taxes on unhealthy food or banning adverts aimed at children. There was no evidence that relying on the food industry to exercise “corporate responsibility” would address the problem.
Prof. McPherson was a co–author of the government-commissioned Foresight Report which highlighted the need to tackle obesity in 2007.
Speaking at a press conference in London, he said he believed ministers appreciated the scale of the problem. But he argued that one of the obstacles in the way of confronting obesity was politicians’ fear of the “nanny state”.
“They don’t want to be labelled with that particular insult, as they see it,” he said.
“I think they do ‘get it’ (the obesity problem) but they don’t know what to do about it, and they don’t think it’s their essential responsibility.”
Clinical obesity is defined as a body mass index of 30 or higher. BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by height in metres squared. A “normal” BMI is 18.5 to 24.9 while the “overweight” range is 25 to 29.9.
Steven Gortmaker, professor at Harvard University in Boston, US, who co–led an analysis of the causes of the obesity epidemic, highlighted the importance of policy-led solutions, especially those focused on children.
“A good place to start is to begin by thinking about children,” he said. “Children cannot distinguish between fact and fantasy. They’re not making their own decisions here.”
Tam Fry, chairman of the Child Growth Foundation and spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said: “Adults have choice but children can’t take informed decisions about what they’re eating. They go by taste.”
He said a United Nations High Level Meeting on obesity taking place in New York next month would be a “once in a lifetime opportunity for the world to get on top of this problem”.