Much political hay has been made about the obesity epidemic in the United States. As this epidemic grows ever more acute, we react with horror when we discover whom it has reached next and how badly it is affecting them.

The latest casualty in obesity’s long march to the slack shores of complete debility are teenagers. And you’ll be surprised to learn that it the fairer sex suffer worse effects. “A study found that obesity heightens blood pressure more in teen girls than teen boys, putting teen girls at higher risk for heart disease and stroke,” reports an October 16, 2011 article at The State Column.

Some 1,700 teens participated in the study. They had their blood pressure and body mass index (BMI) measured at regular intervals. At the study completion the data led researchers to the following troubling insights:

• Obesity places girls at 3 times the risk faced by boys for high blood pressure;
• Obese boys found themselves at 3 1/2 times higher a risk for elevated systolic blood pressure than that faced by their non-obese peers;
• Obese girls found themselves at 9 times higher a risk for elevated systolic blood pressure that that faced by their non-obese peers.

The obesity crisis confronting the U.S. is potentially catastrophic, because it far outstrips similar crises confronting other developed nations. The State Column article offers a sense of the scale and the scope of the impending disaster:

In comparison with global obesity rates, the U.S. obesity is dramatically higher. According to World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 10% of children globally are considered obese/overweight. Within the U.S., about 17% of American children and teens are obese, and 32% are overweight. Approximately one third of American babies/toddlers aged between 9 months and two years are overweight/obese. This can lead to serious health issues for the U.S. in the coming years.

America’s youth are quickly becoming so many ticking time bombs of ill-health and incapacity, it seems. What, then, is to be done? Australia appears to hit upon a possible solution. Taking cues from Hungary and Denmark, legislators in Oz are contemplating a fat tax to be levied on foods deemed unhealthy as a consequence of their inordinately high fat or sugar content.

Though nowhere near the magnitude of the U.S.’s own, the obesity youthquake down under is by no means inconsiderable. “Obesity is challenging smoking as the No.1 cause of preventable death,” reports an October 17, 2011 Stuff.co.nz article. “The lifestyle disease leads to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis and certain types of cancer. One-quarter of Australian children are now obese, costing the country nearly $60 billion.”

Australian officials have no interest in seeing those already baleful figures climb any higher. The entire situation, in fact, has led to renewed impetus to a nation-wide junk food tax, which had languished “in the too-hard basket,” as a consequence of its being too difficult “to distinguish ‘good’ fats from ‘bad’ fats.”

Emergencies have a way of sweeping aside such punctilios, however. It looks that as far as things go in the antipodes, its full steam ahead toward the refuge of a fat tax as a way of avoid the national health storms brewing as a consequence of rampant obesity.

The United States and the United Kingdom are considering imposing similar taxes on their respective citizenry. “In America, where one in three people are obese, the merits of a tax on soft drinks are being debated,” the Stuff.co.uk article reports. “Americans are drinking twice as many sugary drinks as they were 35 years ago and every extra glass of sugar-sweetened drink a child consumes increases their risk of becoming obese by 60 per cent.” Whereas in the U.K., the road toward the chubby-no-more tax is a bit more difficult to descry:

[T]he British Prime Minister, David Cameron, whose ruling Conservative Party has long advocated ”nudging” – rather than forcing – people towards healthier food choices, has admitted that a radical step akin to Denmark’s fat tax may be needed in his country. A quarter of British people are obese.

Whether you reside in the U.S., the U.K., or elsewhere in the latter’s commonwealth, you owe it to yourself to cut fatty foods from you menu. If you have done so and still find it difficult to shed pounds, you should consider purchasing a diet meal delivery service or beginning a do-it-yourself diet regimen. The efforts you make in pursuing either of these options you’re bound to find a whole lot less taxing than the alternative your government has in mind for you.