Rome, Sept 07: Pasta and ice cream may be great, but they're leading to a major side effect: bulging Italian children, who are now officially the flabbiest in Europe.
Figures from an obesity conference in Milan this week showed it's high time Italians learnt to watch their waistlines, with more than a third of Italian bambini overweight.
"The rise in overweight and obesity affecting children is highlighted dramatically in Italy -- the worst in Europe -- with a prevalence reaching 36 percent in some studies," the new report from the International Obesity Task Force said.
David Porter, World Health Organisation diet and health spokesman, said it was easy to blame expanding waistbands on fast food but put it more down to a general overabundance of energy-dense foods high in saturated fats, salt and sugar.
"People just don't generate the energy levels to deal with that concentration of high energy food. You would have to run a marathon a day to work off what most of us can quite comfortably snack on in ten minutes," Porter said on Friday.