Medical chief: Being overweight becoming seen as normal

England's Chief Medical Officer has warned expanding waistlines have become normal and a tax on sugar may be needed to help the nation lose weight.

ITV News reporter Lewis Vaughan Jones reports:

Deaf and blind people may be at higher risk of developing dementia, England's Chief Medical Officer has warned.

Dame Sally Davies said although the data was not conclusive, investigating a possible link between sight or hearing impairment and diseases such as Alzheimer's could aid doctors' understanding of dementia.

Hard-drinking soap characters offer an "irresponsible" portrayal of excessive alcohol consumption, according to the Chief Medical Officer for England

Analysis of six weeks of soap operas and found characters drinking too much on 162 occasions, with negative consequences often left out.

However, Dame Sally Davies' report on the state of the nation's health points out that this kind of portrayal of drinking is not a modern phenomenon - every single one of Shakespeare's plays mentions alcohol at least once.

She also says that the way drinking is presented in popular culture is out of kilter with ordinary people's behaviour.

"Drinking to excess is not ‘normal behaviour’, and portraying it as such is irresponsible. Some 75% of the population does not consume excessive quantities of alcohol, and the proportion of the population which abstains from alcohol (15% in 2009) is increasing," she writes.

Being overweight or obese is in danger of becoming seen as normal, the Chief Medical Officer for England has warned.

Dame Sally Davies said she was "increasingly concerned that society may be normalising being overweight".

Her annual report on the state of the nation's health said excessive consumption of sugar, particularly in soft drinks, was one of the factors behind rising obesity.

Dame Sally is calling on food and drink manufacturers to tweak their products so they have less added sugar.

She also said a 'sugar tax' may need to be considered if the industry's efforts to make products healthier are not successful.