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Marketing junk food to children has to become socially unacceptable, a leading obesity expert has said, warning that the food industry has done too little voluntarily to help avert what a major report this week will show is a “far worse (obesity) scenario than even our gloomiest predictions”.
Professor Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce think-tank, believes that when it comes to public health the response of the food industry has so far been a case of “too little, too late”.
This week a UK government-commissioned investigation into the scale of the obesity problem and what science can do to help tackle it was set to be published.
“The expected outcome of the Foresight Report on Obesity suggests we are facing a far worse scenario than even our gloomiest predictions,” Professor James said, calling for changes in education, media, culture, transport, leisure, and the food chain as well as in health service provisions.
He is also calling for negotiation with the food industry to establish targets for improvements. “Our diet-related health should no longer be a casualty in a battleground where every advance is resisted to defend short-term market share and profit. The food business will do best with clearly agreed goals on changes to our foods.”
All kinds of marketing must be addressed, added the professor, who said: “We must go much further in protecting children ... we need to make it socially unacceptable to peddle to children and that means big supermarkets and small retailers really changing their approach.”
The Foresight report published today is expected to say that obesity will cost the UK £45 billion a year by 2050 if the loss of productivity from people who suffer obesity-related healthcare problems is added to the cost of treating them.
By that time 60 per cent of men, 50 per cent of women, 20 per cent of primary school girls and half the boys will be obese if more is not done, it will suggest.
Bahrain is fighting a similar battle against obesity.
Ros Godson, a leading member of the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association, which represents school nurses, says any programme to tackle the problem needs to be linked to help inside and outside the classroom with diet and exercise if it is to make a difference.
“Just weighing and measuring children is a precious waste of time; it provides no support to those that need help.
“Ideally we need to find a way for the health and education disciplines to work together and secure a robust prevention, treatment and referral system.”
