Junk food is storing up problems

The junk food diet of British children is a "nutritional timebomb" and specialists at two conferences in London have warned of an obesity epidemic.

Children also risk diabetes, heart disease and cancers because of what they eat. The damage is compounded by a "couch potato" lifestyle.

Nutritionists and dieticians at a forum held by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health revealed that one in 10 children under four is overweight and that by the year 2040 half the population will be obese.

One toddler in eight also has an iron deficiency because of a lack of meat, pulses and breakfast cereal, while rickets - caused by a lack of vitamin D - has also reappeared.

Dr Margaret Lawson, senior lecturer on paediatric nutrition and dietetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said that our postwar diet "may have contained quite a lot of fat but people would burn it off ". She said our more sedentary lifestyle today means this is no longer the case.

Dr Lawson added that children are storing up 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 into their mouths."

The forum heard that more than two thirds of pre-school children eat an unhealthy diet of white bread, crisps, chips and sweets, according to government research.

Well over half of older children in the five to 18 age group eat no leafy green vegetables which are a rich source of vitamins and fibre. Some 16 per cent of girls may also miss out on other nutrients due to dieting.

Meanwhile, experts at a British Nutrition Foundation conference heard that rates of obesity are rising as fast in Britain as in the US. Obesity in Britain has already trebled over the last 20 years and now affects one woman in five and one man in six.