British doctors called on Wednesday for dramatic action to fight childhood obesity, including a ban on some vending machines, after issuing a report saying about one million Britons under the age of 16 were obese.

Machines selling unhealthy foods should be banned, as should adverts for "junk food" aimed at children, while school meals should adhere to strict guidelines, the British Medical Association (BMA) recommended.

It said if current trends continued, at least a fifth of British boys and a third of girls would be obese by 2020.

"It is madness that at a time when children are being told to eat less and do more exercise, they go into school and are sold fizzy drinks and doughnuts and do less than two hours time-tabled exercise a week," said Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the BMA.

"Children are being bombarded with mixed messages. On the one hand they might learn about healthy eating at school and then they go home and spend hours watching TV and see celebrities eating hamburgers, crisps or drinking fizzy drinks."

Experts say junk food and low exercise levels, combined with the popularity of computer games and television, are behind the growing obesity rates.

It is estimated that about 10 per cent of children or at least 155 million youngsters worldwide are overweight or obese. The BMA's report "Preventing Childhood Obesity" said that globally 22 million children under five were severely overweight.

Rising obesity levels have already lead to an increase in children suffering from type II diabetes, a disease largely found in adults, and in future will cause more cases of heart disease, osteoarthritis and some cancers, the BMA report said.

Its recommendations also included a legal obligation on manufacturers to reduce salt, sugar and fat levels in pre-prepared meals and only allowing celebrities and children's TV characters to endorse products approved by the UK's Food Standards Agency.

"There is no room for complacency and it's essential that the government listens to what doctors are saying," said Nathanson.

Childhood obesity has become a major political issue in Britain, partly due to a successful campaign by "Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver who revealed the poor quality of food being served to children in state-run schools.

The celebrity chef labelled some of it "processed junk" and found some children were unable to identify even common vegetables.

Source: China Daily