Only around one third of adults in the UK are considered to be a ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ weight. Many adults consume 200 to 300 calories a day more than they need, while children who are already overweight or living with obesity are consuming up to 500 extra calories. For people who drink alcohol, this can account for 10 per cent of the calories they consume: around 3.4 million adults consume an additional day’s worth of calories each week from alcohol.8

The Health Survey for England for 2019 found that 36.2 per cent of adults are overweight and a further 28 per cent are obese (of whom 3.3 per cent are morbidly obese). Another 1.8 per cent were considered underweight, meaning only 34 per cent of adults are in the healthy weight range. An estimated 1 in 3 children leave primary school overweight or obese.6,9

In Scotland, around 29 per cent of people aged 16 or older were overweight or obese in 2019, with a further 37 per cent reporting they were overweight. Self-reported data for Wales indicates 25 per cent of adults were obese and 35 per cent were overweight, while in Northern Ireland in 2019/20, 27 per cent of adults were obese, with a further 38 per cent overweight.9