Being morbidly obese is a choice. There, I've said it. I know it won't make me popular, that many will accuse me of ''fat-shaming'', while others will argue that being grossly overweight is a disability, and who chooses to be disabled? But to be honest I am still reeling in shock from having seen Plus Sized Wars on UK's Channel 4 this week. I watched the documentary with a mounting sense of horror, as the so-called plus sized bloggers - young, obese women who flaunt their bodies on Instagram and Twitter and have thousands of online followers - and a host of fashionistas, retailers and shoppers lined up to insist that "fat is fabulous".

But here is just one less than fabulous consequence of the obesity epidemic in this country that I encounter daily in my work as a doctor. I'm a radiologist, and some of the men and women who come to see me (in the new, extra large wheelchairs the NHS now has to purchase) are so large that they can't fit in a standard MRI scanner so we can try to diagnose what is going on underneath all those layers of fat. There are open-sided scanners we can use instead but the images they produce are of a much poorer quality.

Big is beautiful: not according to Dr Sarah Burnett. Credit:Getty

Far from being fabulous, fat is a public health time bomb. Forget the problems that the NHS faces with an ageing population - a recurring theme in this election campaign. Statistics show that 60 per cent of teenage girls in this country are overweight, and 20 per cent of young mothers are obese (28 per cent of Australian women are obese while a further 28 per cent are overweight). Britain is home to the fattest women in Western Europe, and our men are fifth in the league table, according to a 2011 study published in The Lancet. I can't believe things have improved since then.

The harsh truth is these people are not going to reach old age. Complications associated with their obesity will get them first - having cost the rest of us a fortune in treating them simply because they eat too much, and no one seems prepared to tell them. To tell them that they need to stop; that it will be hard but they can - with help - do something about it. It is utterly wrong to ''normalise'' these gargantuan appetites and bodies, as high street retailers are so cynically doing with aggressive marketing of high fashion plus sizes promoted by beautiful, but morbidly obese models.