How tough do you think it’s going to be to curb the obesity epidemic? A leading researcher thinks governments are going to have to take similar actions as they did to fight smoking. I definitely think the critical word here is action.
Professor Boyd Swinburn, who works with the World Health Organization (WHO), tells Reuters some of that action could be regulations to limit how companies market junk food to children and requirements for schools to serve healthy meals.
Swinburn believes governments need to lead the way by sending hard-hitting messages and introducing policies like the ones taken against smoking - for example, tightly controlled marketing to children and warnings of the dangers of smoking on cigarette packages.
The WHO researcher says the food industry has played a big role in the obesity epidemic with more and more processed products that are cheaper and better-tasting but filled with unhealthy ingredients.
According to the World Health Organization, 400 million people around the world are obese - 20 million of them are children under the age of five.
WHO predicts by 2015, about 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese. Wow, I really hope we can reverse this trend.
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Tags: junk food, Obesity Epidemic, World Health Organization
