IN THE home of the deep fried Mars bar, counting calories has never been a top priority.

But Scotland’s love affair with junk food — where the local chippy will batter and fry anything from a pizza to a Bounty bar — has finally won the nation a new epithet to rival its long standing reputation as the sick man of Europe.

New figures suggest that Scotland’s gastronomic eccentricities and laissez-faire attitude to healthy living, have caught up with the young to produce a generation of couch potatoes who are now officially among the most overweight in the world.

The Government research, published by the Information Statistics Division (ISD), revealed that Scots school children are now more likely to be obese than even their beef burger munching peers in the United States.

A third of Scots school children are overweight and one in five is obese by the time they reach the age of 12, compared to one-in-six in the United States and one-in-20 across Britain as a whole.

For a small country, already troubled by problems of adult heart disease exacerbated by the hard drinking and heavy smoking culture, it is a weighty timebomb that some experts fear is now out of control.

This year Professor Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce, a network of European experts, said the situation in Scotland was at crisis point. “The obesity epidemic is escalating totally out of control and Scotland is worse than England,” he said. “This is more than just a warning signal, it’s a red light.”

Yesterday politicians reacted with shock to the findings and warned parents that their children are storing up serious health problems for later life. In fact, children are already contracting conditions associated with middle age, such as diabetes.

According to the ISD, obesity levels have risen by 4.1 per cent in the last five years in Scotland and children as young as three are now expanding faster than the rest of the country.

An over reliance on junk food and a lack of exercise have been blamed for the increase and the problems are not confined to those living in poverty. The middle classes are equally implicated.

“At all ages the proportion of Scottish children who were estimated to be overweight, obese and severely obese were higher than expected and in many cases double the UK expected rate,” an ISD spokesman said.

According to the British Nutrition Foundation, the diets of four-year-olds in the 1990s living in the fourth richest country in the world contained less iron, less energy and more sugar than in 1950s Britain.

But the reality is that children’s obesity is also inextricably linked to a lack of exercise. If that were not enough, another major hurdle in overcoming childhood obesity, is youthful attitudes towards it. Recent research suggested that most young people scoffed at diets, were happy with their shape and did not link diet to health.

Lewis Macdonald, the Scottish deputy health minister, said all developed countries had experienced a rapid rise in obesity levels. “Scotland is not alone in experiencing a rise in obeisty in the last two decades, all developed countries are experiencing a similar trend, but we do want to be in the forefront of tackling it,” he said.

The Scottish Executive claims to have invested record levels in improving health. But Nanette Milne, MSP, and the Scottish Conservative Party’s health spokeswoman, said more needed to be done.

“These figures are appalling. Scotland is currently recording rates that are twice, four times and five times higher than the projected UK average in these areas,” she said.

Shona Robison, the Scottish National Party’s shadow health minister, said the Executive had failed to end Scotland’s couch potato culture.

• The British Nutrition Foundation found that diets of Scottish children in the 1990s contained less iron and energy but more confectionery and soft drinks than in the 1950s.
  
  
• A WHO survey of 11-year-olds in Scotland found that 47.2 per cent of boys and 40.4 per cent of girls drank drank fizzy drinks every day.
  
  
• Scottish youngsters ate more chocolate than any European country apart from Malta and Netherlands.

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