Burgers should be banned from buses and trains – like smoking – to tackle damaging health habits and the spiralling obesity epidemic, experts now claim. Speaking at the world’s largest obesity conference in Portugal, experts have called on politicians to tackle the ubiquity of junk food on public transport. They said that the obesity epidemic is so acute that similar steps should be taken to curb people’s damaging eating habits as have been done for smoking and excess alcohol consumption. They claim a curb on junk food would cut the £16billion bill that overweight people cost the NHS annually. The policy suggestion was made at the European Congress on Obesity, which highlighted the success of the 2007 ban on smoking in public and last year’s alcohol ban on all London transport. Manchester’s Metrolink tram system has already initiated such a ban and Professor Jason Halford, from the European Association of Obesity and head of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Liverpool, called on politicians to bring in a similar ban nationwide. Professor Halford also said that such a ban would restrict, and hopefully change the current culture that facilitates endless snacking. “It’s become normal to see people eating burgers on buses,” Professor Halford said as reported in The Telegraph. “We eat all the time because there are eating opportunities all the time. When I was growing up in the 1970s food was far more restricted – the type of food was more restricted, and you had to prepare it. Now, it’s ubiquitous, food is everywhere and the type of food that is most ubiquitous is unhealthy.” Obesity experts also said at the conference that the ban would save other passengers from either tempting aromas – or the ‘nauseating’ smell of junk foods late at night. “It would be a great relief for the bus companies if that wasn’t the case. It also would set a norm that we don’t consume all the time,” Professor Halford said. One in four adults in the UK is now obese, this is a worrying increase from those same figures in the 1970s when only one in 35 people was obese. Speaking at the conference in Oporto, Portugal, Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said, “We have become used to guzzling on the go so our buses and trains reek of burgers. We decided it wasn’t acceptable to smoke on trains. The scale of this crisis is such that we need to think about bringing food back into the kitchen,” Fry said. However, Transport for London said that they could not force passengers not to eat junk food while travelling although they encouraged people to respect fellow passengers.