Research on the drinking habits of 11- to 15-year-olds actually found those who had drunk recently consumed an average of 12.7 units a week, which is "equivalent to over six pints of normal strength beer or nearly one and a half bottles of wine". Are hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren really drinking six pints of beer a week? Probably not.
Meanwhile the News of the World seized on a report by the National Obesity Observatory. The number of obese schoolchildren in Britain "could be DOUBLE the official estimate", shouted the paper, topping its story with the headline: "It's double blubber". "Tens of thousands of kids REFUSED to be weighed during a government programme to measure the scale of the problem," said the paper. Some were "too ashamed to step onto the scales", the paper adds. Hardly a surprise when papers use words like "blubber" to describe them.
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