Teenage girls are eating a worse diet than they did ten years ago and putting their long-term health at risk, a national nutrition survey suggests.
Girls of secondary school age are not only living on junk food such as crisps, cakes, biscuits and fizzy drinks, but they are also smoking and drinking more than boys.
The pattern of consumption suggests that many girls are being influenced by fashion models. However, while girls aim to be slim, the study found that 37 per cent of teenage girls are overweight and 22 per cent are classified as obese. Among boys of the same age, 35 per cent are overweight but only 16 per cent are obese.
The preliminary findings of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, released yesterday, have made such depressing reading for health chiefs that civil servants have turned to social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to see if 13 to 16-year-olds can be weaned on to healthy eating by their own friends.
