Obesity now causes more cases of four common cancers in the UK than smoking.

New research carried out by Cancer Research UK has indicated that people who are obese now outnumber those who smoke in the UK by two to one. The figures also show that obesity causes more cases of certain cancers than smoking, as the charity urges the Government to take more action to help tackle obesity in the UK.

Currently, almost a third of UK adults are obese and although smoking is still the UK’s biggest preventable cause of cancer, this analysis has found that obesity is more likely to cause four different types of cancer than smoking. Excess weight causes around 1,900 more cases of bowel cancer than smoking in the UK each year. The same worrying pattern is true of cancer in the kidneys (1,400 more cases caused by excess weight than by smoking each year in the UK), ovaries (460) and liver (180).