Wallace and Gromit to fight fat

2009-01-03 14:02

London - The British government launched a campaign to fight the nation's expanding waistlines on Friday with a cartoon by the Oscar-winning animators of Wallace and Gromit to hammer home the message.

The TV adverts by Nick Park's Aardman Animations featuring plasticine figures is the centrepiece of the Change4Life drive to reduce the 9 000 premature deaths linked to obesity in Britain every year.

The campaign, which includes $108m of government marketing cash over three years, and support from 33 companies, aims to reverse the forecast that by 2050 up to 90% of today's children will be overweight or obese.

"Change4Life has a critical ambition, we are trying to create a lifestyle revolution on a huge scale, something which no government has attempted before," said public health minister Dawn Primarolo.

Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said people were increasingly ignorant of the risks of over-eating and lack of activity.

"The research we undertook for this campaign showed that only 6% of people understood the links between obesity, overweight and adverse health effects," he said.

The first brightly coloured Nick Park advert shows primitive man evolving from a hunter gathering his own food to a sedentary lifestyle in front of the TV before he is shocked into taking exercise by illustrations of fat pumping around the body.

The campaign slogan is "Eat well, move more, live longer".

- AFP