Britain cooks up new action plan for rising obesity

In the wake of two reports, the government is proposing a host of measures, including sending letters to parents of obese schoolchildren.

By Mark Rice-Oxley | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the October 25, 2007 edition

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London - It's unavoidably official.

Two reports, issued this week and last, have called Britain the fattest country in Europe and warned that more than 50 percent of adults will be obese by 2050 unless something is done.

In response, the Land of Fish and Chips is devising a comprehensive new strategy to tackle this problem, one that some are putting on the same, er, scale as climate change.

The government, which had already resumed weighing schoolchildren, signaled this week that the next stage could be formal warning letters to parents notifying them if their offspring get too plump. It has also been subsidizing fruit and vegetables for young schoolchildren, encouraging low-income women to breastfeed, and funding programs to get children to walk and cycle to school.

But that's just a start. Experts advise that multiple policies are needed to rebalance a lopsided dietary equation in which food intake heavily outweighs energy expended.

"You can't just say, 'Eat less and be more active,' in a world where it's impossible to be active because the roads are congested and you can't walk anywhere and the only food you can get cheaply is not very healthy and you're advertising it all the time to people," says Neville Rigby of the International Obesity Taskforce in London.

On the intake side, experts say work needs to be done on food content (particularly salt, sugar, and fat), portion sizes, nutritional awareness, the high cost of healthy produce, and the marketing of unhealthy foods to kids. On the energy side, it's not just about getting people to exercise, but revamping towns to encourage people to walk, cycle, or even take the stairs instead of escalators or elevators.

New study foresees $90 billion cost

The global obesity epidemic has provoked alarm for a decade, with an estimated 400 million people worldwide now classified as obese. The World Health Organization predicts that figure will rise to 700 million by 2015.

But two recent studies in Britain have brought home the scale of the crisis here. A Health Department report this week found that obesity was more prevalent in Britain than any other European country; 23 percent of the population are obese – a threefold increase since 1980. In response, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, warned that obesity could be a "potential crisis on the scale of climate change."

The second, the Foresight Report, a major review conducted by 250 experts, warned that 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women could be obese by 2050, based on current trends – a health burden that would cost the country more than $90 billion a year. It said weight gain had become the default because human biology had not adapted to modern life, with its labor-saving devices, motorized transport, and sedentary work.

"The undeniable fact is that the pace of the technological revolution has outstripped human evolution," said Professor Peter Kopelman, one of the leading report contributors.

Helping youths stuck in junk culture

Kath Sharman has focused on helping children understand food in the five years she has run an obesity program in the northern city of Sheffield. She teaches young people about healthy eating, food groups, and different kinds of produce.

"We show them how to make smoothies," she says. "We do portion sizes, which is very important because a lot of young people are just eating too much."

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