Obesity
Research has found that middle-age spread has an effect on people's waistlines but not on their weight as people get older.
This casts doubt on whether people should rely on body mass index (BMI) to assess whether a person is a healthy weight.
The results were the findings from a nine-year study of 1,044 people, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), aged either 39 or 59 in 1991. The height-waist circumference and weight of each participant was measured in 1991, 1995 and 2000 and used to measure changes in BMI over time.
On average, both sexes in the younger years gained between 0.5kg and 1kg a year. This weight gain was fastest in their younger years. Those in the older age group gained least weight in the second half of the study, however, although their overall weight may not have changed, their waist circumference did.
Researcher Geoff Der, at the MRC's social and public health sciences unit, said: "The BMI is a good measure of lean body tissue, but an expanding waistline may be a more reliable measure of the amount of fatty tissue a person has gained".
Concurrently, a study at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre has shown that obesity could be partly due to a virus that causes common respiratory infections. The results have increased hope that a vaccine or antiviral medication could be developed to help stop viral obesity.
Government statistics have warned that 12 million adults and one million children could be obese by 2010 in the UK unless steps are taken to improve the nation's health.
According to a new study conducted on behalf of Standard Life, annually, UK adults are drinking around 155,000 calories through alcohol, adding to the country's growing obesity problems.
