The shape of things to come

Yolanda Adams, 27 has chosen to have her stomach stapled

For this week's special series on food and obesity, we sent our reporter Graham Satchell to the Southern United States. Read his personal account of the people he filmed, in Texas and Louisiana.

Find out here what's in Breakfast's food week

"A year from now, I'm going to be sexy."

It's 24 hours after surgery and Yolanda Adams is suffering.

"I'm going to be more healthy, a smaller size and hopefully live a normal life," Yolanda tells me.

We're filming at the Lakeview Hospital just north of New Orleans. We've been following 27 year old Yolanda Adams as she does what more than 100,000 Americans did last year.

She's had her stomach surgically reduced.

It's drastic, invasive and expensive, but it's rapidly becoming THE cure for obesity in the US.

Yolanda hopes to lose half her 27 stones by this time next year - and she's hoping that her high blood pressure and diabetes will also clear up.

We went to America to see what's being done to tackle obesity. In the summer our government in Britain will publish a long awaited White Paper, outlining the strategy for fighting the fat here at home.

So, I thought, can we learn any lessons from our increasingly overweight cousins across the pond?

Last resort or first choice?

Surgery is what you could call the solution of last resort. But in Louisiana they're trying a pretty radical experiment. Obesity and its related health problems - diabetes, heart diseases and cancer - are costing billions of dollars in health care.

So, the state is paying for some of its public workers to get gastric bypass surgery for free.

The thinking is that by spending big now they'll save on health costs in the long run.

Doctors fear this generation will die before their parents

In New Orleans itself they're trying what you might call the more traditional approach.

The City Authorities are spending $15m to cajole people into losing weight.

"I think we can give people enough information so they will want to change themselves," says Dr Kevin Stephens.

He's in charge of the New Orleans Health Department and he's got quite a job on his hands.

New Orleans has the worst rates of cancer and heart disease in America.

Dr Stephens' strategy boils down to this: a TV ad campaign persuading people to walk more and eat healthy food - and money for small community groups which extols the virtues of exercise and healthy living.

The British government will probably end up doing something similar here.

Most experts think it won't work. But more radical measures like taxing fatty food or banning the advertising of junk food to kids are deemed too difficult - or too heavy handed.

Children at risk

In Texas we met Dr Stephen Ponder of the Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi.

He's dealing with an epidemic: 40% of children in Texas are obese. Diabetes is becoming commonplace.

"in our country, sodas (fizzy drinks) are being given to children as young as seven months of age.

"French Fries are the dominant vegetable for toddlers," he complains.

"It's those kinds of behaviours that are fuelling this epidemic."

Dr Ponder is staggered that the message isn't getting through to parents and he left me with the most chilling message of our trip:

"I think this will be the first generation of kids whose parents will outlive them."

It's a warning from America

Breakfast's series on food begins on Tuesday April 6, on BBC One and BBC News 24