All of a sudden playing outside became uncool

This is a pretty scary figure and the blame is being laid not on individuals' eating habits but on the fact that we have so many labour-saving devices at hand.

It is easy to see how experts would come up with this scenario. We have become a nation of lazy folk who would rather sit in a bubble with ten remote controls and not have to get up for a single minute.

And while many will want to change these habits it is unlikely we will.

This is what we have been sold for so many years and this is what we want to do.

Even the simple action of answering the phone - once something we had to get up for - has changed. Now, everything is at hand and if we could find more ways to make our lives simpler and less energy-sapping I am pretty sure we will all go out and buy it.

When I was growing up I had no idea what a computer game was. Even watching TV was something we did when we had nothing else to do.

I spent many of my days roaming the streets playing either football or cricket.

I regularly check out my old neighbourhood and where there was once some grass there is a house and where I once played epic football games there is a no ball games' sign up.

All of a sudden playing outside became uncool or too dangerous and staying at home and downloading stuff was in the in-thing.' But what I have found equally damaging is the number of fast food places in some towns.

Take Blackburn for example - it is quickly becoming the fast food centre of the North. There is a takeaway on almost every street corner.

Once a take-out was something people had once every couple of months. I know of people now, who will eat take-outs three or four times a week and then complain their kids are getting fat.

This latest Government report might well want to lay the blame on society changes and how people are being pressurised' into becoming fat.

But the answer may well be what it was many years ago...to simply stop eating junk food and take some sort of regular exercise.