Fast food restaurants could be banned from opening near schools as part of a more interventionist approach by the Government to tackling childhood obesity.

Some of you may remember when McDonald's UK CEO Steve Easterbrook took a stab at the video game biz last week, relating it to child obesity. Daily Star writer Paul Vale had a snappy comeback to the McDonald's bigwig saying that the fast food franchise should look at itself first...

When asked 'Do you consider yourself to be overweight?’ 56 percent of American respondents answered 'yes.' Qualtrics Survey Software, a leader in the enterprise feedback management industry recently surveyed Americans from all 50 states to discover their opinions on obesity, exercise and the fast food industry.

The CEO of McDonald’s in the UK, Steve Easterbrook, does admit that fast food restaurants play a role in childhood obesity; however, he says that the main reason is due to video games.

The issue came up during a recent interview with Steve Easterbrook, the UK CEO for the McDonald's franchise. He talked about the measures they had taken to "slim down" their menu in the light of growing concern of childhood obesity, which is typically considered to be the fault of the fast food industry. QUoting Easterbrook's statement on this...

Super Size Me is an Academy Award-nominated 2004 documentary film, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock's film follows a 30-day time period (February 2003) during which he subsists entirely on food and items purchased exclusively from McDonald's, and the film documents this lifestyle's drastic effects on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit. During the filming, Spurlock dined at McDonald's restaurants three times per day, sampling every item on the chain's menu at least once. He consumed an average of 5,000 calories (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment.In February 2005, Super Size Me Educationally Enhanced DVD edition was released. It is an edited version of the film designed to be integrated into a high school health curriculum.MSNBC has also broadcast an hour long version of the film, in addition to the regular version.Before launching this experiment, Spurlock, age 32 at the time the movie was filmed in 2003, ate a varied diet but always had vegan evening meals to appease his then-girlfriend (now wife), Alexandra, a vegan chef. Spurlock was healthy and slim, and stood 6 feet 2 inches (188 cm) tall with a body weight of 185.5 lb (84.1 kg). After thirty days, he gained 24.5 lb (11.1 kg), a 13% body mass increase, and his Body Mass Index rose from 23.2 (within the 'healthy' range of 19-25) to 27 ('overweight'). He also experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and liver damage. It took Spurlock fourteen months to lose the weight he gained.The stated driving factor for Spurlock's investigation was the increasing spread of obesity throughout U.S. society, which the Surgeon General has declared "epidemic," and the corresponding lawsuit brought against McDonald's on behalf of two overweight girls, who, it was alleged, became obese as a result of eating McDonald's food. Spurlock points out that although the lawsuit against McDonald's failed (and subsequently many state legislatures have legislated against products liability actions against producers and distributors of "fast food"), much of the same criticism leveled against the tobacco companies applies to fast food franchises, although it could be argued that fast food is not physiologically addictive in the same sense as nicotine.