CHALLENGE TO CONFRONT CAUSES OF

GLOBAL OBESITY EPIDEMIC

The global epidemic of obesity must be confronted urgently to cope with the growing burden of chronic health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer facing large sections of the world’s population, an international health think tank warns today (Monday). 

As the World Health Organization announced the findings of an expert group which spent over a year preparing a controversial report (click here for report) on the impact of diet on health, the International Obesity TaskForce forecast that adult obesity rates could rise to almost 50% in little over 20 years in some countries.

Children could be even more seriously affected as more evidence emerges of increasing numbers of overweight and obese youngsters developing type 2 diabetes.

Prof Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity TaskForce, and a member of the expert group which prepared the WHO report, warned: “We now know that the biggest global health burden for the world is dietary in origin and is compounded by association with low physical activity levels. This is going to plague us for the next 30 years.

“It is clear that the severity of the global obesity epidemic is the result of changes in diet and activity in recent decades. Obesity has rocketed in the UK over the past 20 years and has risen drastically in the USA. But overweight and obesity is rising everywhere and is already having a severe impact in many parts of the developing world.

“We are already seeing the impact of diet in terms of rising levels of diet and weight-related diseases. This burden is here to stay and is sure to get worse, unless we act now and treat this with a real sense of urgency.

“Despite all the attempts so far to increase the provision of healthier choices over the last 10 or more years, obesity rates have accelerated.  The challenge now is to make the diet healthier by a progressive improvement in nutritional value while lowering the energy density of all foods.  Everybody's diet needs to change without consumers having to struggle with food labelling systems that no-one understands.

“We need to challenge not just health ministers, but international agencies as well as all dimensions of national government, local government, businesses and boardrooms as well as civil society to confront this whole issue head on. We need to look now at how we can achieve fundamental changes in the way we live – from depending less on cars and being more active to reducing the consumption of the fatty, sugary and salty diets we have at present that are main factors undermining health while increasing consumption of healthier food. 

“This means the biggest challenge ever for the food industry, which finds itself in a difficult predicament. Major investors are being warned about the risks of leaving their capital long term in parts of the food sector that, like the tobacco industry, may be vulnerable to large-scale health damages from lawsuits particularly in the USA. 

“Yet recent analysis has shown that the vast majority of opinion leaders among food manufacturers and retailers agree that they must provide more of the healthier food choices consumers are already signalling they want. The food industry must now sit down with WHO, and others to work out how to seriously address this issue and become part of the solution rather than remaining part of the problem,” Prof James added.

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For further information contact:
Neville Rigby, director of policy and public affairs, IOTF
mobile +44 (0) 7939250347 email neville.rigby@iotf.org

IASO International Obesity TaskForce
231 North Gower Street, London NW1 2NS
tel +44 20 7691 1902 /fax +44 20 7387 6033
mobile +44 7939250347
Registered as a charity in England. Reg. No. 1076981
Internet: http://www.iaso.org  /  http://www.iotf.org

Prof Philip James chairs the International Obesity TaskForce, (part of the International Association for the Study of Obesity). He is vice president of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences and chairs their chronic disease prevention group. He chaired the Commission on the Nutrition Challenges of the 21^st Century which delivered its report - Ending Malnutrition by 2020: an Agenda for Change in the Millennium – to the United Nations in March 2000. 

IOTF has contributed analysis to the Global Burden of Disease project (GBD), a worldwide collaboration of over 100 researchers, sponsored by WHO and the World Bank and based at the Harvard School of Public Health.A projection of obesity rates up to 2030 will be included in Global Burden of Disease, to be published by WHO and Harvard later this year.

Among UK children overweight and obesity rates doubled to more than 20% in less than 15 years.

In the USA adult obesity rates have risen from 14.25% in 1978 to 31% in 2000. 25% of all white children and 33% of African American and Hispanic children were overweight in 2001.

About 300 million people are estimated to be obese (with a Body Mass Index of 30 or more) with a further 700 million overweight. (a Body Mass Index of 25-29.9)

Recent recommendations to lower the threshold of overweight in Asia to a Body Mass Index 23 would increase these figures considerably.

The World Health Report 2002 estimated that more than 2.5 million deaths annually are weight-related. Deaths directly related to obesity have been estimated at 320,000 a year in Europe and more than 300,000 in the USA.