British tabloid the Daily Star has some good news for slightly heavier Brits who battle to make it across the road before the little green man turns to red.
The publication reports that Brits are getting “fatter and older”, hence the green man will now flash 20% longer at crossings so the “slower, fatter and older population” can cross the road safely.
Under their current government guidelines, “pedestrians have 6.1 seconds to cross both lanes of a normal road at a walking pace of 1.2 meters per second. However, a new recommendation will allow 7.3 seconds for people to “waddle” at a speed of 1 metre per second", said the tabloid.
According to the World Obesity Federation , 51 percent of the world will be overweight, and one in four people will be obese within the next 12 years. The World Obesity Federation’s 2023 atlas translates this in numbers to more than four billion people who will be obese or overweight by 2035. Rates of obesity are rising particularly quickly among children and in lower-income countries, the report found.
The federation has called it the "other pandemic of the 21st century."
