Obesity carries same risk as smoking in teens

(The Independent): Overweight teenagers run the same risk of an early death as people who smoke regularly – and the risk increases substantially with very fat adolescents. Teenagers who are clinically obese have the same risk of premature death as someone who smokes more than 10 cigarettes a day. An investigation of 45,000 men whose health was monitored for 38 years has found that being overweight at the age of 18 is equivalent to being a regular smoker in terms of the overall risk of dying relatively early in life from preventable diseases.

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