Fatties, you need to get a grip

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IN HIS report on National Health Service spending just published, Sir Derek Wanless warns that Britain's obesity epidemic is spiralling out of control. On current trends, he says, 33% of men, 28% of women and 20% of children will be obese (in other words, extremely fat) by 2010. Now it's official: far from slowing the incidence of obesity as it pledged to do, Labour has presided over a dramatic rise, one that threatens to bankrupt the NHS. No health service, however effective or well-funded, can ever cope with record numbers of ailing citizens suffering the consequences of obesity; conditions like diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
I had my own personal encounter with Britain's sprawling fat problem earlier this week while travelling back from holiday. I found myself on a full flight, sat next to an extremely fat woman whose body size exceeded the dimensions of her seat. "Would you mind if we left the arm rest up ?" she asked, explaining that she was "rather broad around the hips", an understatement of epic proportions.
Initially, I gave her the answer she wanted to hear, then hastily backtracked when I realised that this would mean enduring an eight-hour flight in an already cramped space with half of her ample frame occupying my seat. As it was, even trying to put the arm rest down proved impossible because it was constantly forced upwards by her bulging thigh. I felt sorry for the woman, certainly. She must have had a desperately uncomfortable journey. But I also felt put upon. How much longer before territorial disputes over plane seats become as commonplace as neighbour fights over Leylandii hedges ?
Travelling through airports offers a graphic demonstration of how we have totally lost the plot with obesity. Last year, in Beauvais airport outside Paris, I observed three check-in queues. The first two, bound for Stockholm and Amsterdam, consisted of people of a generally slim or at least normal build, a bit like British people would have looked like in the 1960s, say. The third queue, bound for Prestwick, was a national embarrassment. Almost everyone was overweight. They looked out of puff, self-conscious and robbed of any vitality they might otherwise have had by the burden of dragging around all those excess kilos. In denial, too, trying to squash themselves into the those jumbo-sized jeans now designed to accommodate sizes 18-32. How the prospect of returning home - where they might blend in with the rest of the plump population - must have appealed!