Over the past few months, my waistband has been slowly but irrevocably expanding. I now look as if I have been melted and poured into my trousers, when before they were merely ‘snug’. There is no give left. I asked the scales and they didn’t lie: I have this year added around five kilograms to my formerly willowy frame.
In normal times I might shrug and attempt to rectify the situation by taking the stairs, instead of the lift, or with a lazy trip to the shops in search of a bigger waistband. But, alas, these are not normal times; according to new research from the Government, the more bulk I put on, the greater my risk of becoming seriously ill if I contract Covid-19. I’ve no choice but to lose this extra upholstery — and swiftly.
I’m not alone. A study by King’s College London found that almost half (48%) of those questioned admitted they had put on weight during lockdown. Boris Johnson, too, says he was “way overweight” when he contracted the virus. And just under two-thirds (63%) of adults in Britain are officially classed as overweight or obese; the UK has consistently ranked as one of Europe’s fattest nations.
Following his brush with death, the PM has undergone something of a damascene conversion. Once at the head of the charge against the nannying approach to tackling obesity; now he is wringing his hands, urging us to “do our bit” and fight that flab.
Partly in response to the pandemic, but also concerned with the nation’s health as a whole, the Government has unveiled a series of measures to tackle this obesity ‘time bomb’. So we have a ban on junk food advertising before the 9pm ‘watershed’, along with a prohibition on supermarket two-for-one offers. Calorie counts will also need to be added to menus in chain restaurants and cafes that employ over 250 people.
Tackling the junk food ads must have looked like an easy win. They currently appear up to nine times an hour at children’s peak viewing times. And kids who watched over three hours of television per day were almost three times more likely to buy junk food products than children who watched little or no television.
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