Foreword to the Special Issue: Sins of Commission (and Omission)

Abstract

First paragraph: It is all so very obvious. We are getting fatter; day by day, year by year, country by country. In the UK two-thirds of us are now overweight or obese, and these doleful statistics are reinforced by everyday observation: so many of us are no longer walking, but waddling; bellies everywhere bulging out between trouser and top; train seats, hospital beds, coffins no longer able to accommodate our ballooning bodies. The cause of this malaise is as obvious as is the corpulence: we are over-eating – most particularly we are gulping down far too much processed food laden with fat, salt and sugar. Our sedentary lifestyles surely don’t help, but it’s our diets that so blatantly put on the pounds: you can’t walk off junk food; you just have to stop eating it. The awful collateral is also staring us in the face: devastating and unaffordable epidemics of diabetes, CHD and other chronic diseases. And most obvious of all is the moral bankruptcy that leaves our children unprotected in the face of this existential threat.