obesity

‘Cause” is a strong word. It means that A results in B happening. Causality is also surprisingly difficult to prove. Most medical studies only show association between A and B, while causality often remains speculative and frustratingly elusive. Obesity and diabetes are no exception. There are...

The UK's obesity crisis is being fuelled by businesses pushing unhealthy food and larger portions on shoppers, according to health experts. The Royal Society for Public Health warned consumers were being tricked by a marketing ploy known as upselling. The tactic involves shops, cafes and...

Thousands more stomach-shrinking operations need to be carried out in the UK, say surgeons, who warn the country is lagging behind the rest of Europe despite the toll being taken on people’s health and warnings that the obesity crisis could bankrupt the NHS. Reducing stomach size prevents...

Scientists at Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute have found a mechanism by which the brain coordinates feeding with energy expenditure, solving a puzzle that has previously eluded researchers and offering a potential novel target for the treatment of obesity. Obesity -- a major...

Four in ten young adults in Britain are overweight or obese, according to new figures released by the NHS. Nearly three million 16- to 24-year-olds weigh too much - a million more than two decades ago, the statistics reveal. Doctors said the generation risked dying at a younger age than their...

Does stress make you fat, even if you don’t overeat? That is the question researchers from UCL have been trying to answer by giving volunteers of different shapes and sizes a haircut and measuring levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their hair. Long-term stress raises cortisol levels, and...

Obesity is one of the most significant threats to health in the U.S. and is responsible for the development of multiple serious medical problems such as diabetes, heart disease and some forms of cancer. Yet obesity is barely covered in medical training, according to a new Northwestern Medicine...

A rise in obesity in adolescents may be down to a sharp drop in the amount of calories they burn while resting. A study in the International Journal of Diabetes found energy used at rest was 25% lower in 15-year-olds compared with when they were 10 - a fall of 500 calories a day. This is...

The term "healthy obesity" has gained traction over the past 15 years, but scientists have recently questioned its very existence. A study published August 18 in Cell Reportsprovides further evidence against the notion of a healthy obese state, revealing that white fat tissue samples from obese...

Medical experts and campaigners have criticised the government’s childhood obesity strategy as weak and embarrassing, and accused policymakers of throwing away the best chance to tackle the culture of unhealthy eating that is crippling the NHS. The government’s measures, centred on the sugar...

Local councils in England are warning that government cuts to public health funding could hamper their efforts to tackle obesity. Local Government Association figures show that councils will have spent £505m by 2017 on fighting obesity. Councils use the money to measure children's weight at...

Being overweight may not be as unhealthy as it was 40 years ago, Danish research suggests. The study found the "moderately" overweight now had lower rates of early death than those who were normal weight, underweight or obese. The work, published in JAMA, looked at many thousands of people's...

The Labrador retriever, known as one of the greediest breeds of dog, is hard-wired to overeat, research suggests. The dog is more likely to become obese than other breeds partly because of its genes, scientists at Cambridge University say. The gene affected is thought to be important in...

The obesity crisis is partly caused by the wide availability of unhealthy snacks and not a lack of self-control, a leading health expert has argued. Environmental factors as well as the influence of an individual’s genes make it harder for some people to maintain a healthy bodyweight than...

There are now more adults in the world classified as obese than underweight, a major study has suggested. The research, led by scientists from Imperial College London and published in The Lancet, compared body mass index (BMI) among almost 20 million adult men and women from 1975 to 2014. It...

Rising levels of obesity and unhealthy weights could be linked to 670,000 extra cases of cancer in the next 20 years, a UK report predicts. If current trends continue, experts say, almost three in four adults could be overweight or obese by 2035, bringing a host of health issues. The Cancer...

Sally Davies, the UK’s chief medical officer, is right to highlight women’s health issues. Her report, published at the end of last week, is comprehensive and thoughtful but her implicit claim, that obesity poses a threat to the nation comparable to terrorism, is concerning (she wants it to be...

Obesity is the biggest threat to women's health and the health of future generations, warns England's chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies. In her annual report, she said tackling obesity should be a national priority and women should be empowered to lead healthier and more active lives...

Chris Askew Chief Executive of Diabetes UK Calls for the Government to introduce a 20% tax on sugar sweetened soft drinks are getting stronger and stronger. Just last month Public Health England (PHE), the Government's own agency tasked with protecting the nation's health, called for a sugar...

IMPLEMENTING a sugar tax could make substantial progress in reducing dementia rates, a Scottish scientist will tell a conference this week. The debate over the introduction of a levy on sugar has focused on tackling obesity, but dementia expert Professor Craig Ritchie has now suggested it could...