NHS blasted for being 'politically correct' after it emerges official advice describes fat people as 'living with overweight'

• Experts claim that using 'first-person' language like this reduces discrimination 

The NHS has been blasted for being 'politically correct' after it emerged that official advice described fat people as 'living with overweight'.

The NHS weight advice reads: 'Living with overweight and obesity can affect your quality of life and contribute to mental health problems, such as depression, and can also affect self-esteem.'

Experts claim that using 'first-person' language like this reduces discrimination, which comes after research stated that calling someone large was offensive, the Sun reports.

But Tam Fry, from the National Obesity Forum, told the newspaper: 'The NHS use the phrase "living with overweight" as a politically correct way of appeasing patients.

'It is a mistaken attempt to ease their fear of being labelled fat.'

Fry said that the term blurs the line between BMI 26 and any larger size, as BMI 30 and higher is medically classed as obese and can be life-threatening.

Those classed as being obese - which doctors recognise as a disease - have a higher risk of having cancer, a stroke or dementia, while being overweight usually indicates something much less serious, like simply carrying a few pounds too many. 

'The adult population living with overweight in England is 25.6 million (62 per cent), of which 11.4million adults (25 per cent) are living with obesity,' a report on the NHS digital weight management programme states.

'If you're living with overweight or obesity, visit your GP for advice about losing weight safely and to find out whether you have an increased risk of health problems,' further guidance adds. 

Christopher Snowdon, from the Institute for Economic Affairs, said that while terms like 'living with overweight' is portrayed as 'sensitive and politically correct', they actually present overweight and obese people as victims of a disease they 'can't do anything about', which Snowdon added was not helpful.

But the NHS told the Sun that 'living with overweight' was a nationally and internationally widely-used term.