Friday, March 04, 2005

Obesity is getting bigger

Looking into how obesity was reported 10 years ago I discovered that there wasn't much of it about, in the UK newspapers anyway. It seems that as are our bodies getting bigger, column inches expanding at an unhealthy rate too:

Number of UK national newspaper headlines with the words "obese" or "obesity" in 1994 = 6
Number of UK national newspaper headlines with the words "obese" or "obesity" in 2004 = 465

Number of UK national newspaper articles containing the words "obese" or "obesity" in 1994 = 157
Number of UK national newspaper articles containing the words "obese" or "obesity" in 2004 = 4557

(* Excludes FT and Scottich titles)