The UK faces the prospect that 12,000 cases of weight-related cancer will be diagnosed each year by 2010, as a result of the escalating problem of obesity.

According to Cancer Research UK, this would represent an increase of 1,500 per year on current figures and it threatens to put a potentially untenable strain on the National Health Service (NHS).

Already in the UK, 23 per cent of men and a quarter of women are categorised as obese and the situation with children has been deteriorating rapidly. It is thought that 20 per cent of all children are now overweight and five per cent are deemed obese, as a result of poor diets and limited activity levels.

While most people are aware of the links between obesity and heart disease and respiratory problems, it seems that many are still dangerously unaware that carrying excess weight also makes the body more susceptible to cancer. In truth, experts believe that obesity is responsible for around four per cent of all cancer cases.

"It is now well established that being overweight increases the risk of developing several types of cancer," said Tim Key, Cancer Research UK epidemiologist. "The effects on breast and womb cancer are almost certainly due to the increased production of the hormone oestrogen in the fatty tissue," he added.

"We are less sure of the precise mechanisms in other obesity-related cancers but we can confidently predict that the number of these cases will increase unless the rise in obesity in Britain can be reversed."

Obesity also poses a problem in terms of diagnosis, as it is more difficult to spot cancer in obese people. Treatment tends, therefore, to be delayed leaving sufferers with considerably lower survival rates.

There were 153,397 deaths from cancer in the UK in 2004, of which 22 per cent were a result of lung cancer and 11 per cent were caused by cancer of the colorectum.

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