Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
They say that you are what you eat. By current trends it’s looking like, by the year 2050, we’ll all be 150 kg by our thirtieth birthday and the only exercise we’ll get is activating the direct computer access to McKFC for our next order of a pork fat thick shake.
Obesity is no laughing matter for those living with it, particularly for children. The jolly image of the subtly named Fatty from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five rarely corresponds with the miserable, unfit, teased child that you and I meet in clinic. And we’re living in the middle of an epidemic of it, or so we’re told. Our children are getting fatter, doing less exercise and eating worse and worse foods. On the other hand, the other epidemic we’re living with is the one of obsessive thinness, of which the worst extreme is anorexia nervosa and associated illnesses. It is very confusing to try and figure out why society has these two apparently paradoxical morbidities.
But …