Fat society
From our UK edition
Considered historically, debt and fat are twin phenomena. Thirty years ago neither was a problem; today, they are two crushing burdens on the western world. Britain has a trillion pounds of debt. A quarter of our population is obese. If you were to remove the excess fat from our bloated citizens and put it on scales it would weigh about 400 million pounds. The gloomier official projections show Britain’s national debt rising until at least 2030. Over the same period the number of obese people will double to just under half the population. Obesity is responsible for over 50 illnesses including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
