Bill Harvey: What a waste

When Susie Orbach suggested that ‘fat is a feminist issue,’ the vociferous response showed clearly how emotive an issue obesity is and underlined what a wide range of influences there are over our bodies and their shape.

If it is possible to think of obesity purely in terms of a health issue and a risk factor for disease, then the statistics are shocking. Last week, Diabetes UK published their latest data which included the fact that there are ‘nearly 7,000 children and young adults under 25 with type 2 diabetes in England and Wales’. This is about 10 times the number of previously reported cases. Not only is obesity a major contributory risk factor, but early onset is much more likely to result in blindness.