Fat Brits to get free Fitbits and diet drinks on £425-a-head NHS plan to help them beat diabetes

FAT Brits will get free Fitbits on the NHS to help them beat diabetes.

The trackers will be handed out amid efforts to ­double the number of overweight adults given help to slim.

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GPs have been told to enrol 200,000 a year on the NHS’s £435-a-head fat-fighting programme which will also offer low-calorie shakes and exercise classes.

Around 5,000 with newly-diagnosed Type 2 diabetes will be put on the fat-free liquid diets. In trials, half of those on shakes rather than on solid food were free of the disease a year on.

Fat Brits who struggle to attend regular appointments will instead be given activity trackers, such as Fitbits, to help them slim. It comes as experts say two in three of us are too fat and yearly spending on diabetes tops £10billion.

NHS England boss Simon Stevens said doubling the size of the £100million Diabetes Prevention Programme would quickly pay for itself through treatment savings.

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He said: “We are ramping up practical action to support hundreds of thousands of people and help them to avoid obesity-induced heart attacks, strokes, cancers and Type 2 diabetes.

What’s good for our waistlines is good for our wallets given the huge costs to taxpayers from these largely preventable illnesses.”

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Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, welcomed the initiative. He said the need for action on obesity and the diseases it triggers was “unquestionable”.

Diabetes UK boss Chris Askew hailed the NHS’s “ambition”. He also called for better control of food marketing aimed at children.

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