Tackle obesity like smoking: researcher (Reuters)

GENEVA (Reuters) - Tackling the global obesity epidemicwill require governments to take similar action to that manyused to curb smoking, a top researcher said on Wednesday.

This could include regulations that restrict how companiesmarket "junk" food to children and requirements for schools toserve healthy meals, said Professor Boyd Swinburn, a publichealth researcher who works with the World Health Organisation.

"The brakes on the obesity epidemic need to be policy-ledand governments need to take centre stage," Swinburn, aresearcher at Deakin University in Australia, told Reuters atthe 2008 European Congress on Obesity.

"Governments have to lead the way they did with the tobaccoepidemic. We need hard-hitting messages."

Action is urgent because, aside from sub-Saharan Africa,nearly every country has suffered a dramatic rise in the numberof obese people in the past 30 years. That increase has likelybeen a tripling in many industrialized nations, he said.

The World Health Organisation classifies around 400 millionpeople around the world as obese, 20 million of them childrenunder the age of five.

Obesity raises the risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetesand heart problems, and is a problem that is piling pressure onalready overburdened national health systems.

Swinburn says the food industry has largely driven theepidemic with a stream of processed products that are cheaperand better-tasting but filled with unhealthy ingredients.

Lack of physical fitness and exercise, while important,have played only a small role in explaining why the number ofobese people has soared in recent decades, he said.

"Commercial drivers around food have been the biggestinfluence over the past 30 years," he said. "The product, theprice, the promotion and the placement has changeddramatically.

Swinburn urged governments to introduce policies similar tothose taken against smoking. These have included tightlycontrolled marketing to children and regulations warning of thedangers of smoking on cigarette packages.

Obesity is persistent despite people being increasinglyaware of the risks of being overweight, demonstrating theproblem requires direct government intervention, he said.

"Governments have a number of ways to influence thebehaviors of a population," Swinburn said.

Among anti-obesity measures taken, New York has bannedartery-clogging trans-fats from city restaurants and is forcingfast-food chains to display calorie counts on their menuboards.

Britain plans to spend 75 million pounds ($145 million) ona campaign encouraging healthy lifestyles as part of a wideranti-obesity strategy including compulsory cooking lessons forchildren and the promotion of exercise.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Robert Woodward)