Jonathan Rojo, 14, and his sister Yomara, 9, at an
eat-all-you-can buffet lunch in Houston. Houston has been voted the fattest
city in the USA for the last 3 years running by Men's Fitness magazine. The
alarming and seemingly unstoppable rise in the rate of child obesity is a
major health issue in America and elsewhere in the world with the situation
is worsening all the time. In Houston rates have exceeded 25%. Meanwhile
two-thirds of all Americans are overweight, and a third obese. Obesity kills
325,000 people a year in the USA, more than drugs, car accidents, shootings
and AIDS combined. It is time obesity was taken seriously as a medical,
rather than an aesthetic issue. It costs $125 billion a year to treat. The
World Health Organisation have called it "a global epidemic."
