Press Release - Immediate

The Prime Minister must appoint a Cabinet overlord to lead a new strategic approach to halting obesity, a leading expert will urge today. (Monday)

In a keynote address to obesity experts at the Royal College of Physicians in London, ahead of this week's publication of the government's Foresight Report, Prof Philip James. Chairman of the think tank, the International Obesity TaskForce, highlights that the Government has at last joined the mainstream of thinking on obesity, recognizing the need for substantial changes at many levels of central and local government as well as in business and society at large.

"The Government at last agrees with our projections of the medical crisis on obesity and now sees the bigger picture. Serious measures must be put into place swiftly, rather than hoping that targets to reduce obesity will be achieved 'by wishful thinking'.  The expected outcome of the Foresight Report on Obesity suggests we are facing a far worse scenario than even our gloomiest predictions. We need to respond rapidly and decisively," said Prof James who has produced a sequence of reports warning the UK of the impending obesity threat over the past 30 years.

There is a great range of necessary actions that can only be achieved with strong Cabinet leadership across all departments. "We need to deliver real changes in education, media, culture,  transport, leisure, the food chain as well as in health service provisions to emphasize prevention - not just as a message but in real actions on the ground. The challenge now facing responsible industry leaders is to 'go the extra mile' in helping to address what the heath minister has likened to climate change."

He said that there must be radical turn around with business leaders accepting a new level of corporate social responsibility, otherwise rapid regulatory measures to specify higher quality foods will be necessary to allow good business to profit and consumers health to improve.

"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.

"The efforts to introduce voluntary changes in food reformulation - most notably in salt so far - may encourage us to hope that industry leaders can respond but so far the response has been too little, too late. We need a more effective and major transformation in the quality of our normal foods not just special products.

"We must go much further in protecting children. Addressing marketing in all its forms is one step as the Ofcom measures do not go far enough. We need to make in socially unacceptable to peddle to children and that means big supermarkets and small retailers really changing their approach.

"We also need to see how addressing transport can provide synergies with action on climate change. Our towns and roads must now be designed for people to move around - not cars - providing natural opportunities to incorporate routinely more calorie-burning activity into our daily lives."

* Prof James will deliver the keynote address at the Royal College of Physicians at 1015 Monday 15th to open the National Obesity Forum Conference: The Public Health Time Bomb!

W. Philip T. James, CBE, MD, DSc, FRSE, FRCP, is chair of the International Obesity TaskForce, President-elect of the International Association for the Study of Obesity and chair of the Global Alliance for the Prevention of Obesity and related Chronic Diseases. His first UK report on obesity was published in 1976, he produced the Royal College of Physicians report, Obesity, in 1983, chaired the WHO expert report on Diet, Nutrition and Prevention of Chronic Disease in 1990, and produced the Nutrition and Physical Activity Task Force report, "Reversing the Increasing Problem of Obesity in England" for the Department of Health in 1995, warning that the obesity epidemic was about to escalate dramatically within 10 years. He also chaired a United Nations Commission on the nutritional challenges of the 21st century published in 2000.

For further information contact:

Neville Rigby
Director of Policy and Public Affairs
International Association for the Study of Obesity /International Obesity TaskForce
231 North Gower Street
London NW1 2NR
DL 0207 6911902
Mobile 07939250347
Fax 08707051233