The junk-food timebomb

Britain's children are eating themselves into ill- health, experts warned.
Their junk-food diets are storing up serious health problems and threatening an obesity epidemic.
The experts drew a dramatic contrast between modern children and the 'leaner and healthier' generation raised during the rationing years of the 1940s and early 1950s.
They said today's children risk diabetes, heart disease and cancers because of what they eat and the damage is compounded by a 'couch potato' lifestyle.
The stark facts of the 'nutritional timebomb' were spelled out at two separate conferences. Leading nutritionists and dieticians revealed that:
One in ten children under four is obese;
Milk consumption - vital for building strong bones - is declining;
One toddler in eight has an iron deficiency because of a lack of meat, pulses and fortified breakfast cereals;
The disabling Victorian disease rickets - caused by a lack of vitamin D - has reappeared;
Health problems resulting from being overweight already cost the country £2billion a year;
By 2040, half the population will be obese.
Part of the blame was directed at schools which put chips on the menu every day and food companies who aggressively market high-fat and high- sugar snacks and drinks to children.
But changes in family life are also a major factor in the nutritional breakdown which has accelerated across Britain since rationing ended in 1954.
A meeting of specialists at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, organised by children's vitamin specialist Haliborange, heard that a whole generation of children may now be 'pre-ill' because of their diets.
Many suffer from the lethal combination of being overweight yet poorly nourished.
Weight problems caused by an addiction to junk food - or simply ignorance of the alternatives - carry the risk of heart disease and diabetes later in life.
But even children who look healthy may be missing out on vital nutrients and putting themselves at risk of the brittle bone disease osteoporosis and some cancers, including those of the breast and prostate gland, in adulthood.
Dr Margaret Lawson, senior lecturer on paediatric nutrition at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, said: 'The post-war years did provide a very good diet - we were never better nourished as a nation.
'The lifestyle was also very active for most people, which kept them fit.
'The diet may have contained quite a lot of fat and energy but people would burn it off - and our lifestyle changes today mean that is no longer the case'.
Dr Lawson warned that today's junk-fed children were storing up a lot of trouble for themselves later in life.
She said: 'They may look healthy - the fact is they certainly get fewer infections than the post-war generation - but in the long term they may have a higher risk of some cancers, osteoporosis and diabetes because of what they are putting in their mouths.
The post-war diet contained only limited amounts of butter, cooking fat, chocolate, meat and cheese, while healthy amounts of nutrients came from wholegrains, potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables.
Home cooking and family meals had yet to be replaced by high-fat and high- sugar convenience foods, takeaways and constant snacking.
In contrast, Government figures now show that over two-thirds of pre-school children eat an unhealthy diet comprising white bread, crisps, chips and sweets.
Well over half of older children in the five to 18 age group eat no leafy green vegetables, which are a rich source of fibre and vitamins.
Some 16 per cent of girls may also miss out on other nutrients due to dieting.
Recent studies show the number of children with weight problems has doubled.
Besides the obvious physical health dangers, specialists also fear that anaemia due to poor nutrition early in life can have long-lasting effects on a child's mental development and learning ability.
Clinical psychologist Dr Catherine Dendy, of Great Ormond Street Hospital, said parents had a responsibility to educate children about healthy eating, as many bad habits were 'learned' at an early age in the home.
She said: 'Meals consumed in front of the television may lead to over-eating because the brain is too busy to recognise the signals of fullness from the stomach.
'You may have two parents working different shifts, passing like ships in the night, working terribly hard but not having time to cook a meal for themselves or the children.
'If you are going to change the child's eating habits, you often have to change the whole culture of eating within the family and that can be very hard.' Nutritionists at a British Nutrition Foundation conference, also in London, heard that rates of obesity are rising as fast in Britain as in the U.S.
Unless the trend changes, the UK population will be as fat as today's Americans in as little as ten years.
Obesity in Britain has already trebled over the last 20 years and now affects one woman in five and one man in six.
Dr Susan Jebb, of the Cambridge-based think-tank Human Nutrition Research said: 'The shape of our nation is changing.
'Obesity is the most enormous threat to public health. It's also costing us a fortune - an estimated £2billion per annum.'