Euro-blubber

The US usually takes the flak for being an overweight nation, but it turns
out that Europeans have nothing to be complacent about. A study by Wieland Kiess
of the University of Leipzig suggests that half of all Germans are overweight,
while a fifth are “pathologically obese”—fat enough to endanger their
health. Other Europeans are not much better. Obesity is “the prime pathological
risk factor today”, says Kiess. At a meeting in Leipzig last week, researchers
discussed ways to diagnose the onset of obesity in childhood so as to prevent an
increased risk of kidney and circulatory disease and…