Couch-potato kids risk heart attack

Today's couch-potato kids are tomorrow's cardiac arrest victims, the European Commission has warned.

A diet of junk food and exercise-free television and video games has left nearly 22 million schoolchildren in Europe overweight - a figure growing by 400,000 every year.

Three million of them are now classed as obese, with 85,000 joining the obesity ranks annually. The situation is so bad that EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou has made tackling what he called Europe's "obesity epidemic" top priority for a new six-year £260 million EU health programme, starting this year.

"What consumers eat is up to them - but they should be able to make informed choices and have a range of healthy options to choose from," he said.

"That is why the Commission is reviewing the options for nutrition labelling and calling on industry to advertise responsibly and reduce levels of salt, fats and sugar in food products".

The message is not new but a Commission report published on Wednesday aims to step up co-ordinated action across 27 countries in the face of increasing concern about nutrition and obesity.

The EU has spent more than £40 million on obesity research in the last eight years and new EU-wide rules controlling health and nutrition claims on food labels were approved by the European Parliament a year ago.

MEPs also harmonised national rules in the EU on which vitamins and minerals could be added to food. Now Mr Kyprianou wants to streamline public and private sector efforts to promote physical activity and improve diet.

Tougher advertising codes, more commitment from food retailers to reformulate foods and a new pledge from sports bodies to develop schemes to encourage more physical activity are all on the Commission's wish-list in Wednesday's White Paper.

Mr Kyprianou said he would now be monitoring progress, collaborating with the World Health organisation and publishing a report in 2010. By then he hopes to see signs that the current rising rate of obesity - it has more than trebled in most EU countries in the last 20 years - is in decline.

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