Our society places a huge focus on staying fit and healthy, appearing as attractive as the television and fashion stars presented to the public on a daily basis.
Yet jobs are becoming increasingly inactive and sedentary, making it harder to squeeze in the time to exercise.
On top of that, sources of healthy food are becoming increasingly expensive.
Recent estimates place the number of people managing to eat their 'five a day' of fruit and vegetables has dropped by almost a million people in only two years.
In fact, the only part of society consistently managing to hit healthy nutritional targets is the wealthy upper classes.
The middle classes and below are often less trying to tighten their belts in response to reduced wages and spiralling food prices, and the statistics are incredibly worrying.
Over the past five years food prices have risen by up to 32 per cent, while the majority of spending in lower income households is now dedicated to high-fat, high carbohydrate foods that fill up the kids in a hurry, for a fraction of the price of buying fresh fruit and vegetables to sustain them.
Spending on chilled and frozen ready meals, a food source that is traditionally lacking in nutritional quality, is up 25 per cent in only two years.
A major issue at hand is the money-saving production techniques and retail offers extended to consumers, but only in regards to unhealthy products.
Visiting a poundline store consumers can spend perhaps £2 purchasing enough crisps and chocolate to fill out a family's lunch time meals for an entire week, and possibly more.
With the same amount of money you could buy enough fresh citrus to go in a single individual's lunch pack that week, alternatively enough grapes and strawberries to make up only part of a single meal for that same individual.
An unfortunate point has been reached wherein not only are cooking skills being lost, but buying ready meals has become cheaper than creating the food yourself from fresh ingredients.
The price of fresh meat and fish continues to inflate beyond the budget of many families, and the fatty, cheap cuts heavily discounted in ready meals represent the only affordable way to even get meat into their diets.
Chilled, mass-produced meals are often able to find ways to cut costs in ways unavailable to the public.
Buying their vegetables straight from the source lowers prices considerably.
Dairy products like cheese and milk can be replaced with high-fat substitutes carrying only a fraction of the nutritional value traditionally found in dairy.
High amounts of salt can be added cheaply to compensate for the unexciting flavour budget-friendly processing and dilution techniques often create.
Unfortunately, there's no sign of this trend changing.
Part of the obesity problem isn't that people won't change their lifestyles, but the economy gives them no option to.
With the weak UK economy relying on high unemployment to drive down wages, it seems more families are being driven away from nutritional food through no fault of their own.
Yet jobs are becoming increasingly inactive and sedentary, making it harder to squeeze in the time to exercise.
On top of that, sources of healthy food are becoming increasingly expensive.
Recent estimates place the number of people managing to eat their 'five a day' of fruit and vegetables has dropped by almost a million people in only two years.
In fact, the only part of society consistently managing to hit healthy nutritional targets is the wealthy upper classes.
The middle classes and below are often less trying to tighten their belts in response to reduced wages and spiralling food prices, and the statistics are incredibly worrying.
Over the past five years food prices have risen by up to 32 per cent, while the majority of spending in lower income households is now dedicated to high-fat, high carbohydrate foods that fill up the kids in a hurry, for a fraction of the price of buying fresh fruit and vegetables to sustain them.
Spending on chilled and frozen ready meals, a food source that is traditionally lacking in nutritional quality, is up 25 per cent in only two years.
A major issue at hand is the money-saving production techniques and retail offers extended to consumers, but only in regards to unhealthy products.
Visiting a poundline store consumers can spend perhaps £2 purchasing enough crisps and chocolate to fill out a family's lunch time meals for an entire week, and possibly more.
With the same amount of money you could buy enough fresh citrus to go in a single individual's lunch pack that week, alternatively enough grapes and strawberries to make up only part of a single meal for that same individual.
An unfortunate point has been reached wherein not only are cooking skills being lost, but buying ready meals has become cheaper than creating the food yourself from fresh ingredients.
The price of fresh meat and fish continues to inflate beyond the budget of many families, and the fatty, cheap cuts heavily discounted in ready meals represent the only affordable way to even get meat into their diets.
Chilled, mass-produced meals are often able to find ways to cut costs in ways unavailable to the public.
Buying their vegetables straight from the source lowers prices considerably.
Dairy products like cheese and milk can be replaced with high-fat substitutes carrying only a fraction of the nutritional value traditionally found in dairy.
High amounts of salt can be added cheaply to compensate for the unexciting flavour budget-friendly processing and dilution techniques often create.
Unfortunately, there's no sign of this trend changing.
Part of the obesity problem isn't that people won't change their lifestyles, but the economy gives them no option to.
With the weak UK economy relying on high unemployment to drive down wages, it seems more families are being driven away from nutritional food through no fault of their own.
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