England’s trimmest boroughs are today revealed by stark figures that illustrate the country’s bulging waistline.
Kensington and Chelsea tops the league table, boasting the highest share of adults not classed as overweight.
Yet even there, one of the nation’s most affluent neighbourhoods, 45.8 per cent are still considered fat, Government statistics show.
At the other end of the scale, County Durham ranks dead last, with 77.7 per cent of over-18s being overweight.
MailOnline has crunched the full data for all 296 authorities into an interactive map.
A searchable chart also shows how rates have changed in every area since 2015/16, when the Department for Health and Social Care began collecting the figures.
That chart tracks the proportion of the population deemed not overweight or obese, as defined by their BMI.
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As such, the figures might capture adults considered ‘underweight’. Only 1.7 per cent of men and women in the UK fall into this bracket.
Aside from Kensington and Chelsea, six of the other top 10 slimmest boroughs in the country are in London.
These are: Tower Hamlets (45.9 per cent overweight or obese), Westminster (47.9), Haringey (48.5 per cent), Wandsworth (49.5 per cent), Islington (50.1 per cent) and Harrow (52.7 per cent).
The three areas outside of the capital that came in the top 10 were Cambridge (50.4 per cent), Elmbridge (50.9 per cent) and Kingston upon Thames (52.7 per cent).
MailOnline analysis exposing the dire extent of the obesity crisis shows parts of the country have seen double-digit increases in the share of adults deemed fat.
The Wirral, near Liverpool, saw its share of people deemed overweight and obese leap nearly 17 percentage points.
Behind County Durham when looking at the table the opposite way comes the Wirral (76.3 per cent of adults being oveweight), Cannock Chase (76 per cent) and Gosport (74.5 per cent).
Fifty boroughs in total carry an overweight rate of over 70 per cent.
Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum, told MailOnline that the last 25 years of governments have ‘shyed away’ from tackling the problem.
He said: ‘There’s been strategy after strategy but none of them have addressed the quality of the cheap and ultra-processed food we eat.
‘Westminster has been held in thrall by the food industry for years and years and they’re too chicken to do anything about it.
‘Social inequality is a huge part of the picture when it comes to obesity, in terms of living standards and also the better educated in the main are less likely to be obese.
‘But as a country, we are eating about 20 per cent more than we should and that is going to be reflected in the fact that there is so much obesity around.’
Tackling obesity is one of the greatest long-term health challenges currently faced in England.
Around two-thirds of adults are above what is deemed a healthy weight, and of these around 40 per cent are obese.
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In England one in three children leaving primary school are overweight.
Ministers are considering giving slimming jabs such as Wegovy to unemployed obese people to get them back into the work.
Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting has publicly stated the range of drugs have ‘enormous potential’. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also claimed they will be ‘very helpful’ in the war on benefits.
But Fry added that despite the Labour senior leadership team’s words, weight loss drugs should be treated with absolute caution.
‘Ozempic and Wegovy are real problems and people taking them off the shelf are playing with fire – these drugs are for the very obese and should be taken with restrictions and it’s not going to solve obesity at all.’
It is estimated that obesity costs the NHS around £6.5bn annually as it is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer.
Ozempic and its alternatives such as Wegovy, Saxenda and Mounjaro are known as ‘GLP-1 agonists’.
They work by mimicking the naturally-occurring hormone which makes us feel full, curbing the urge to eat.
However due to the recent surge in global popularity, led by celebrity users such as billionaire Elon Musk, chat show host Oprah Winfrey and Khloe Kardashian, doctors in the UK have been ordered to crack down on patients trying to secure the wonder drug.
