In summer, we socialise more, therefore we eat more and we have to look at the ravages of all this when our fellow Maltese and few Gozitans expose their bodies on the beach, or even when fully dressed and tums start to protrude more than bums. But is it mostly because of the genes in our jeans?

Looking fat is not pretty, yet it seems that, despite the fact that we spend more on dieting, exercise and all the things that are part and parcel of trying to slim, the fatter we are getting. Even our young women, beautiful as they look in their way below the navel jeans and skirts are already exposing flab and love handles that were a rarity when I was in my teens. Some young girls have the bodies of mature women and not all of that body is a pretty sight...

Recently, the army tried to recruit more personnel, partly because of the obvious need caused by so many people still landing illegally in Malta. There was no shortage of applicants, but we read that the biggest problem was their not passing the physical test! So it’s not just the girls who go in for comfort eating. Boys too, overfed for a generation on a diet of junk or processed food and all the extras that make up today’s average diet, are bursting at the seams.

Many people who are fat blame their genes and apparently this is not just a good excuse. There is a gene called Perilipin that you not only inherit from your parents and grandparents, it also controls your percentage of body fat and determines whether you’re pear shaped (and whether you store fat on your bum or on your tum). Additionally, there are four variants of this gene that affect your appetite, as well as determining how quickly you burn or don’t burn those dreaded,dreadful calories.

So, that slim, svelte girl you see scoffing a baked cheesecake (thank you Trabuxu in South Street!), while another chubby one looks on longingly, but seems to put on weight just looking at it, is a reality that also has to do with our genes, and scientists are hard at work trying to achieve a bit of equality and fair play in all this. We may in the future even have fat jabs, much as we inoculate ourselves against influenzas, to stop us putting on too much weight.

But it’s not all about genes. There are things we can all do, like obviously eating healthier food and exercising more to keep those rolls of flab at bay. Scarily, for the ever larger group of Maltese women who smoke when pregnant, it can also condemn a future generation to obesity as these foetuses actually inherit a need for more energy to burn less calories. So smoking while pregnant can give you fatter babies, and children who will always have to fight the battle of the bulge. It’s been great having smoke-free restaurants and bars, and it seems all the howls of protest have now abated. But how many people are actually smoking less? It just seems that more and more young people are smoking outside, enjoying the uniquely delicious Maltese cocktail of cigarettes and dirty air.

So the high percentage of smokers now is not going to help the next generation stay slim, even though I know so many people who put on weight when they stop smoking. Waging the war against flab includes removing processed food from your diet, which is apparently essential, and we need to do this for our kiddies if we’ve given up on ourselves. I am surprised that organic food is so low key here. The food we eat contains a staggering number of additives, which are practically absent in organic food.

Food in general is big business here and I am surprised we are not cashing in on what could be quite a lucrative market in healthier and organic choices in food. Schools, mums and dads could exert a big influence in this area. I’ll never forget a propaganda shot a couple of elections back, where half the kiddies were uncomfortably fat.

We need to drill this into them with the same mad enthusiasm we drill all sorts of useless and never to be used information in our schools, if their parents don’t seem to be getting it right as far as their diet is concerned...

It’s all so mixed up. While we are all naturally worried and fed up of boatloads of people arriving here illegally, millions of Africans starve while we fight the flab, or try to, and fail most of the time. We used to laugh at images of fat Americans, but round every street corner you come across some enormously large person, often a young person, and it does make you wonder.

After all the genes have been here way before jeans were ever invented, so eating less and better foods and getting off our bums is crucial so that the many beautiful faces you see in Malta and Gozo are matched by an equal number of beautiful bodies. Those slim, illegal immigrants so many of us love to hate at least do put us to shame in one respect at least....