People ‘have got worse at losing weight but better at gaining it’

Obesity levels in the US will continue to increase in the future, showing that people are not succeeding in losing weight, researchers at Harvard University have suggested.

They claim that America's obesity epidemic will not plateau until at least 42 per cent of adults in the country are obese.

This conclusion was come to after the researchers applied mathematical modelling to 40 years of Framingham Heart Study data.

"Our analysis suggests that while people have gotten better at gaining weight since 1971, they haven't gotten any better at losing weight," said lead author Alison Hill, a graduate student at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Currently, the obesity rate is at 34 per cent and Ms Hill claims that this has been reached because weight gain has spread throughout social networks.

Last week, Paul Sacher, chief research and development officer at Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it! claimed that so many people in the UK are now dangerously overweight that obesity is becoming an epidemic.

How do you think obesity levels could be reduced?