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Diet police to roam workplaces: Super-unsize the nation

Swarms of fat-fighting police could be teeming throughout UK offices by Christmas to downsize the UK's obesity problem, if slimming group Weight Watchers has its way.

 

The American-founded company believes it can sell its healthy-eating services to some 500 UK companies by the end of the year, according to The Times, to help them combat shocking levels of homegrown fattism and promote a good diet. Sounds good, but there's just one catch: it will involve weekly weigh-ins.

 

Nearly 500 companies could sign up to the programme, according to Weight Watchers, just in time for the Christmas party season - just in time for us to devour one more mince pie or glass of mulled wine... and then go on the scales the morning after. Sound scared? You should be.

But perhaps these measures - drastic or otherwise - are needed. In England alone, nearly one in four people are now classified as obese. Nearly 20% of two to 15-year-olds are obese, with a further 14% overweight.

 

The Foresight Report on obesity, published last year, predicted that by 2050, 60% of the UK population will be obese.

 

At the start of this year, health secretary Alan Johnson announced a £372m strategy, Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives, to bring together employers, individuals and communities to support health at work and promote children's health and food. But so far no workplace pilots have run and little has changed since January.

 

So are weigh-ins and diet police services the right answer, or is this too much of a nanny state?

Louisa Peacock |

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