Obese who won't diet are "having their cake and eating it" He recounted the story of one patient who demanded to be put on a course of weight-loss pills rather than attempt to diet. "It happens all the time," wrote Dr Pemberton, who also has a column in The Telegraph. Patients who are not interested in changing their diet in any way, demand to have their cake, eat it...and then pop a pill so that the calories never touch their waistline. And, as a result, Britain now combines austerity with obesity. One-third of children are now considered overweight and three hundred people are admitted to hospital each day as a direct result of their obesity, at a cost of £5bn to the NHS, he said. The doctor claimed the country was adapting to rather than addressing the problem, citing the example of Nottingham Council, which recently spent £500,000 improving its pavements in areas with an overweight population to encourage people to walk more. "Like a middle-aged man deciding to eat what he wants and let himself go, Britain is pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and heading to the fridge," he wrote. And he pointed to figures showing that in the 1960s only one to two per cent of the population were classed as clinically obese, whereas now that proportion is 25 per cent. "It would be easy to blame Britain's lifestyle changes," Dr Pemberton said, "but the worst of it is attitude. People just aren't bothering to lose weight any more. Perhaps obesity is viewed as more normal. He added: "The truth can be the hardest drug to administer. But holding our tongues, prescribing the fat pills and bankrupting the NHS in the process, is the worst solution of all.