Facing up to fat? Europe gets set for the battle of the bulge

Date: 17/03/05

FOR many people, the launch this week of a new initiative to tackle obesity in the EU may have come as something of a surprise. After all, obesity is an American disease - the product of a fast food culture, couch-potato lifestyle and super-sized portions.

The recent hit film Super Size Me, in which comedian Morgan Spurlock pledges to eat nothing but junk food for a month, and the best-selling book about American eating habits, Fast Food Nation, have served to confirm the stereotype: Americans are fat, Europeans, with their traditional diets and moderation in all things, are thin.

Not so, argues Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou: "Our continent is facing an obesity epidemic every bit as bad as the one in North America […] Obesity is rising rapidly and Europe's expanding waistline brings with it devastating consequences for public health and huge economic costs."

The figures are startling. Far from being restricted to America, obesity in many European countries is on a par with levels recorded in the United States, and in some cases is actually higher.

According to a study from the International Obesity Task Force, in the United States, the percentage of the adult population classified as obese stands at 28% for men and 34% for women. Female obesity in Greece, on the other hand, now stands at 38.1%.

And, whereas American obesity is a well-documented phenomenon which has even shown some signs of slowing down in recent years, European obesity is gaining speed. In England, the obesity rate now stands at around 23%. In 1980, it stood at 6%.

When the numbers of overweight and obese people are combined, seven EU member states, Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Malta, actually surpass the United States in terms of the percentage of the population afflicted. In all, some 200 million adults across the EU may be affected. Overweight, it seems, is over here.

All of which poses something of a problem. For obesity is not an ordinary epidemic. Certainly the consequences can be terrible - heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, respiratory disease, and arthritis have all been closely linked to dietary excess - but, unlike most epidemics, the cure is readily and freely available to all.

What has so far been lacking is a concerted effort from governments to inform the public about the dangers and remedies, and a genuine attempt from the food industry to encourage people to eat more healthily.

The latter is perhaps less surprising than the former, but the realisation that something has to be done has finally hit this side of the Atlantic. Hence various national initiatives and Commissioner Kyprianou's new "Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health."

It aims to unite the food industry, health associations, advertising groups, consumer organisations, vending machine producers, the restaurant sector and other stakeholders in developing European-wide action plans to tackle the problem of obesity.

The Commission's role as organiser and overall co-ordinator serves to highlight the pan-European nature of the problem, but much of the action will have to be taken on a local or national level.

Nevertheless, all the founding members of the platform stressed the need to allow consumers to make an informed choice about food. The European Consumers' Organisation pledged to "look at the factors that may encourage or hinder appropriate choices or that influence tastes and eating habits", while the European Vending Association, responsible for about 4.5 million vending machines around Europe, spoke of offering "a wider choice of products [and] non-branded machines".

The primary concern of the commissioner, however, is the worrying trend in childhood obesity, estimated to be growing by some 400,000 each year. The World Federation of Advertisers talked of instituting more self-regulation to control advertising to children, but admitted that it "saw no easy answers" to the problem and argued that a blanket ban on advertising to children would do little to stop the epidemic.

There has already been some progress in trying to convince food manufacturers to do their bit to tackle obesity. Commissioner Kyprianou highlighted initiatives from Kellogg's and Nestlé, while at national level, confectionery manufacturers in the UK recently committed themselves to doing away with king-size chocolate bars.

The difficulty in instituting Europe-wide campaigns is that the Commission has rather restricted competence in health matters. As British MEP Chris Davies points out, "The Commision is right to try and share best practice and stimulate the food industry into taking new initiatives, but its direct role is limited."

Nor will it be easy for the Commission to tell whether its plan has had any effect. The Commissioner refused to set targets, arguing that any decrease in the numbers of obese would constitute a success for the plan, but that in any case the platform would be reviewed in 2006. If a voluntary pact does not work, then the Commission may well try to get tough and introduce legislation.

In the meantime, with obesity levels in some European countries nearing the highest in the world, and with obesity responsible for between 2% and 8% of healthcare costs across Europe, Europeans would be well advised to think twice before scoffing at their overweight American counterparts.

Article on the Europe-wide problem of obesity and national and European initiatives to tackle it.

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