Please match these words/phrases (from the first article) and the meanings on the right:

Fat nation

Please match these words/phrases (from the first article) and the meanings on the right:

Corpse a subheading in a newspaper/magazine article or advertisement

To thrive To broadcast on television or radio

to sap To shed tears (to cry) as an expression of emotion

flabby To make furious; enrage

mortuary something which causes anger/excitement/argument

to weep To deplete or weaken gradually

to clutch A dead body, especially the dead body of a human

to bankroll strikingly unfamiliar, highly unconventional, bizarre

to infuriate moderately fat or overweight, not firm

strapline To grasp and hold tightly

provocative A place where dead bodies are kept before burial or cremation

outlandish To provide all the money/finance for a project/business venture

to air To make steady progress; prosper

McDonald's targeted in US health ad

Unhappy meals: American doctors' TV ad features a corpse holding a hamburger and the line 'I was lovin' it'. McDonald's, which has thrived in the recession, isn't laughing.

Andrew Clark, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 September 2010

It is an image to sap the flabbiest of appetites. An overweight, middle-aged man lies dead on a mortuary trolley, with a woman weeping over his body. The corpse's cold hand still clutches a half-eaten McDonald's hamburger.

A hard-hitting US television commercial bankrolled by a Washington-based medical group has infuriated McDonald's by taking an unusually direct shot at the world's biggest fast-food chain this week, using a scene filmed in a mortuary followed by a shot of the brand's golden arches logo and a strapline declaring: "I was lovin' it."

The line is a provocative twist on McDonald's long-standing advertising slogan, "I'm lovin' it" and a voiceover intones: "High cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks. Tonight, make it vegetarian."

The commercial, bankrolled by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), goes further than most non-profit advertising and has drawn an angry reaction from both the Chicago-based hamburger multinational and the broader restaurant industry.

The National Restaurant Association criticised it as "irresponsible" and said it was an attempt to scare the public with a "limited" view of nutrition. A McDonald's spokesman said: "This commercial is outrageous, misleading and unfair to all consumers. McDonald's trusts our customers to put such outlandish propaganda in perspective, and to make food and lifestyle choices that are right for them."

The commercial, to be aired initially in the Washington area but potentially in further US cities, comes amid an increasingly lively debate in the US about healthy eating. The first lady, Michelle Obama, has made nutrition a signature issue and is leading a campaign to encourage physical fitness and improved diets – particularly among American children, a third of whom are overweight.

The recession has hardly helped the healthy eating cause. McDonald's has enjoyed a relatively prosperous financial crisis as diners opt for its affordable offerings in place of more expensive high-street restaurants. Its global profits for the six months to June were up 12% to $2.3bn, powered by sales rises both in the United States and Britain.

The PCRM's director of nutrition education, Susan Levin, made no apologies for singling out the golden arches: "McDonald's is one of the biggest fast-food chains in the world. Its name and its golden arches are instantly recognisable. We feel we're making a point about all fast food when we talk about McDonald's."

Little exercise, little fresh food. Now the US government is forced to act on obesity

Julian Borger in Washington, The Guardian

West Virginia is used to indignity. Its Appalachian hills are a byword for poverty and its people derided as hillbillies.

Now insult has been added to injury in what will be seen as an unwelcome first in the history of the United States.

A team of federal "disease detectives", normally sent to combat outbreaks of infectious bugs, has been dispatched to the state to chart its frightening obesity epidemic. Epidemiologists from the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) have never before been deployed in this fashion, and it reflects the growing anxiety about the threat obesity poses to the health of the nation as a whole.

Over two-thirds of American adults are overweight and 30% are obese, as are 15% of the country's children. The incidence of diabetes and high blood pressure is widespread and rising.

The figures for West Virginia are even worse. A quarter of the state's children are obese. There are no available clinical statistics for the state population as a whole. On the basis of what West Virginians told researchers about 27% are obese (with a body mass index of over 30), but the actual figure is thought to be nearer 35%. The prevalence of obesity has nearly doubled since 1990.

The result is that 10% of the population suffer from diabetes, 33% have high blood pressure and 28% report doing no physical activity over the course of a month.

The health "Swat" team has just spent three weeks taking their clipboards and scales around West Virginian schools, offices and restaurants in an attempt to understand why so many of the state's people, particularly its children, are getting so fat so very fast.

The disease detectives looked to see if there were any pavements along the roads for pedestrians, whether employees were encouraged to take any exercise, and whether bottled water was on offer alongside the sweet fizzy drinks in automatic dispensers in schools. People were asked whether they "were offered at least one or two appealing fruits and vegetables every day," and "would you replace regular sour cream with low-fat sour cream?"

The figures also make clear that there is still a strong link between obesity and poverty, despite a recent study suggesting wealthy Americans are catching up fast. The three most obese states - Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia - are also the poorest.

West Virginia is third from bottom of the league when it comes to child poverty, with 27% of its children living below the bread line. It has the highest death rate in the nation, is second among 50 states for cancer deaths, and second for smoking. High unemployment and heavy reliance on coal mining are undoubtedly other factors behind the low life expectancy.

The deployment of the medical version of a Swat team has helped dramatise the scale of the crisis, but some health statisticians were sceptical over whether the results of the West Virginia survey would teach the world anything new about obesity and its dangers.

A growing epidemic:

· Obesity is rising throughout the world and affects at least 300 million people.

· In the US the percentage of young overweight people has more than tripled since 1980. Some 16% of children and teens are considered overweight with childhood obesity growing at the rate of 20% a year. Some 30% of adults, more than 60 million people, are obese - one in three women and more than one in four men

· In the UK, two-thirds of adults are overweight. Of these, 22% of men and 23% of women are obese (at least 13kg-19kg overweight), putting their health at risk. The level of obesity has tripled in the past 20 years

· Obesity is rising among British children. In the past 10 years it has doubled in six-year-olds (to 8.5%) and trebled among 15-year-olds (to 15%)

· Obesity is responsible for $100bn (£55bn) in medical costs and 300,000 deaths annually, according to the American Obesity Association

· Throughout the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 4.5kg (10lb). The extra weight meant airlines burnt 350m more gallons of fuel in 2000, costing an extra £157m.

· In 2004 24 states took steps toward phasing out soda and junk food in schools, following 20 states that already had such bans

· Americans eat 200 calories more food energy per day than they did 10 years ago. On any given day, 30% of American children aged four to 19 eat fast food. Overall, 7% of the US population visits McDonald's each day, and 20%-25% eat in some kind of fast-food restaurant

One in three UK primary school leavers are obese or overweight

Little progress made in drive to keep children's weight down, study suggests

Sarah Boseley, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 12 December 2012

More than a third of children about to leave UK primary schools are obese or overweight and the numbers are rising, according to official figures from the school measurement programme.

More than 1 million children were weighed and measured during the 2011/12 school year in the reception class and in year 6, the last year before they move to secondary school.

Over a fifth (22.6%) of the youngest children, just starting primary school, are either overweight or obese, the data from the National Obesity Observatory shows. But by the time they have reached the last year of primary school that figure has risen to one in three (33.9%).

The new figures suggest there has been little progress in the drive to keep children's weight down in spite of major concerns. There has been a small increase in year 6 from last year, when 33.4% of pupils were obese or overweight. The proportion in reception class is unchanged.

The leader of the UK's specialist children's doctors said parents needed more help ensuring their children ate healthily and took enough exercise, such as by a crackdown on the advertisement of foods high in fat, salt or sugar before the 9pm television watershed.

"We know that the environment in which our children grow up is conducive to eating too much of the wrong sorts of food and a sedentary lifestyle. So in order to get children on the right track early on, we need to be looking not only at the parents' role in encouraging active lifestyles and providing healthy food for their children, but also how society can support them in doing so. That includes looking at factors such as how cooking is taught in schools, ensuring school meals are nutritious, that healthy food is affordable to everyone and that children's exposure to junk food advertising is limited," said Dr Hilary Cass, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

The government said it was already taking action to encourage families to eat a healthy diet, referring to its much-criticised agreements with supermarkets and the food industry on what is put on sale as well as its Change4Life social marketing campaign.

"Through the responsibility deal, major supermarkets and retailers are working together to cut calories," said public health minister Anna Soubry. "But we need to maintain and build on this. Soon we will see more fruit and veg added to ready meals, and supermarket fruit and veg sections will be expanded.

"As part of Change4Life, we have run a number of initiatives to get children up and active, and in the new year we will be launching a new campaign to encourage healthy eating."

The figures show more boys are overweight or obese than girls and there is a marked social and economic divide. Obesity was most prevalent in the most deprived areas. It was also highest among black children and lowest for Chinese. Obesity was higher in urban areas than in rural areas for both age groups. The strategic health authority for the London area had the highest obesity prevalence for both reception and year 6. The lowest rates in year 6 were found in the south-central area and the lowest rates in reception classes were on the south-east coast.

Please consider these questions:

1. What is ‘fast food’?

2. Is fast food really bad for health, or is there a general ‘lifestyle’ problem? Who’s or what’s to blame?

3. Is a fast food culture really a problem in Russia?

4. Why is fast food popular?

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