Developing national obesity prevention policies: an international perspective

Abstract

It is only recently that governments have come to recognise that national prevention strategies are needed so it is unreasonable to demand evidence of successful and unsuccessful national programmes. For decades the assumption has been that individual concern and effort should be sufficient to prevent something as simple as weight gain but in practice this advice for decades has been accompanied by an unrelenting rise in obesity rates. Recent rigorous analyses show that individualised advice to reduce intake and take more exercise is an exceptionally poor way of ensuring that a population does not gain weight. The unrelenting epidemic reflects the presence of a “toxic environment” where the need for physical activity has almost been eliminated by cars, mechanical aids at work and in the home, TV and computers etc. It is now very difficult to consider leisure time activity as a population strategy for improving weight gain and preventing the exceptionally expensive medical consequences of obesity. New policies are needed from policy makers independent of industrial interests, many of which have contributed to the current epidemic. Food labelling with traffic light systems is now shown to be highly effective and helps consumers to eat more healthily but the principal ways of changing food patterns depend on governmental and industrial action. We also have to overcome the distortions of the market place induced by the Common Agriculture Policy which has favoured meat, fat, butter and sugar price reduction to the detriment of fruit and vegetables. Approaches to altering the price, availability and the marketing of foods is urgently needed with tough measures to prevent children being commercialised and confused by the marketing of very inappropriate food and drinks.