Obesity has become an epidemic on both sides of the Atlantic: most British citizens could be obese within the following three decades, according to a new government report.

A report by the Foresight program, run by the Office for Science and sponsored by the Department of Health, was developed over a two-year course during which time nearly 250 experts and scientist studied the causes of obesity, according to the Associated Press.

One of the study’s conclusions seems to be that obesity is not a result of over-eating or lack of exercise, but rather “a consequence of abundance, convenience and underlying biology,” as Health Secretary Alan Johnson said a speech to Parliament Wednesday, reports the AP.

“As this report starkly demonstrates, people in the U.K. are not more gluttonous than previous generations and individual action alone will not be sufficient,” the AP quoted Johnson as saying.

The report shows that obesity has become increasingly present, making Britain an “obesogenic” society, with the number of overweight and obese people tripling over the last quarter of a century. One in four adults are now obese, according to the most recent Health Study for England.

And this is hardly the worst, as the report predicts that by 2050, 60 percent of British men, 50 percent of women and a quarter of children and young people will be obese – unless something is done to prevent such a turn of events.

However, prevention can no longer depend entirely on the individual, the health secretary said, emphasizing that the solution does not lie in “exhortations to greater individual responsibility or in the futility of isolated initiatives”

The report proposes instead that earlier action is taken when children begin to gain weight and that the food industry do its bit, by controlling high-calorie foods and providing healthier products.

“Personal responsibility is important, but our study shows the problem is much more complicated. It is a wake-up call for the nation, showing that only change across many elements of our society will help us tackle obesity,” Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser and head of the Foresight programme, said, as quoted by Reuters.

He emphasized that “individual over-indulgence or laziness” are not the sole factors for the current obesity epidemic. Johnson concluded, “The chilling reality is that modern life makes us overweight.”

The report suggests that increasing everyday activity and not maintaining the modern tendency towards sedentarism could also be a favorable measure towards combating obesity.

Earlier this year, American scientists released an even gloomier report on obesity. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Human Nutrition said that by 2015, 75 percent of American adults would be overweight and 41 percent obese.