Obesity isn’t behind the sicknote crisis

The European Congress on Obesity is an annual treat for health journalists, because it guarantees a week of ready-made stories based on unpublished research announced at the conference. Although it only started yesterday, it has already produced such headlines as ‘Children who use smartphones at mealtimes more likely to be obese’ and ‘Children “bombarded by junk food adverts” on video game sites’. According to the Times, the latter study found that people who watch video game live streaming are ‘subjected to adverts for junk food and sugary drinks for 52 minutes of every hour’, which sounds rather unlikely.

Another finding from the conference made the Times’s front page today. Under the headline ‘UK sicknote culture is fuelled by obesity crisis’, readers are informed that obese people are ‘up to twice as likely to take time off work’. The unpublished research apparently found that people with a body mass index between 30 and 35 were 38 per cent more likely to be off work for a week or more for health reasons than people with a ‘normal’ BMI.