“Researchers have found that people burn the same number of calories each day as they have for the last 20 years, which means that over-eating rather than a sedentary lifestyle is the main cause of the ‘obesity epidemic’. More than 20 per cent of Americans and Britons are classed as obese, which means their Body Mass Index is over 30, with an additional 30 to 40 per cent classed as overweight. Researchers from the universities of Aberdeen and Maastricht have discovered that there has been no reduction in the level of energy people use in their daily lives over the past 20 years. They also found that comparisons of energy expended by people in both the USA and Europe differ little from those in pre-industrial societies in the Third World. ‘We found that people have not reduced their energy expenditure over the same period that obesity rates have increased enormously,’ said Prof John Speakman of the University of Aberdeen, co-author of a paper in the International Journal of Obesity. ‘Because we found no evidence for declines in energy expenditure over the last two decades, this work suggests that the obesity epidemic has been largely driven by increases in food intake,’ said Professor Klaas Westerterp, from the University of Maastricht.”