Obesity Is The Public Health Equivalent Of Climate Change

Main Category: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Article Date: 04 Jun 2008 - 14:00 PDT

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The obesity epidemic is the public health equivalent of climate change, the Faculty of Public Health's annual conference in Cardiff will hear today. Not only are the consequences of both potentially catastrophic if allowed to go unchecked, but each are extremely complex problems that require nothing less than a fundamental policy overhaul to address.

What's more, many of the causes are the same. What we eat not only has a profound effect on our waistlines and our health, but also the planet. The UK food industry - including production, manufacture, distribution and the waste it generates - is the biggest single source of greenhouse emissions in the country, while the rise in car use and industrialised food production has gone hand in hand with more sedentary lifestyles and increasingly aggressive marketing by the food industry. Individual energy use has gone down, while society's energy use has continued to rise.

The systematic changes required for society to properly tackle these problems are wide ranging and fundamental, delegates will hear. Both require not only firm action at policy level, but decisive changes at all behavioural levels - from the way companies operate to what we do as individuals: simple things like eating locally sourced produce instead of heavily packaged food that has been flown thousands of miles, and walking instead of taking the car.

'It's not just the causes of climate change and obesity that are similar, so are many of the solutions to both problems,' said Professor Associate in Public Health at Brunel University, Geof Rayner. 'Both are complex challenges that require not only systematic and structural changes within our society, but also fundamental behavioural changes like building exercise into our everyday lives, being careful about eating anything your grandmother wouldn't recognise and always drinking water from a tap rather than a bottle. It will require a decisive change in the way we interact with everything around us, and a fundamental re-calibration of what we think of as normal. It's frightening in its breadth, but the consequences of doing nothing are far worse.'

'We're moving into a different world,' said Chair of Sustainable Development Commission, Jonathon Porritt, at yesterday's session on climate change. 'Instead of lives based on cheap oil and high CO2 emissions, our future will be one of expensive oil and very low CO2 emissions. That's going to have a huge impact on communities and society in general - some good, some bad - including impacts on people's health. Public health practitioners and sustainable development activists already have a huge amount in common in addressing health inequalities, but will now need to work together even more effectively to help promote healthier, more secure, low-carbon lives. Urgently!'

'This is surely is one of the best win-wins for public health,' said Faculty President Professor Alan Maryon Davis. 'Walking and cycling can help to reduce not only our waistline, but also our carbon footprint. So too can eating less meat and more locally grown fruit and veg - great ways to help save ourselves and the planet at the same time."

1. The UK Faculty of Public Health annual conference attracts over 400 public health professionals from across the UK and internationally. This year it is being held in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government and will be an opportunity to look at public health practice in Wales, the rest of the UK and internationally.

For more information on the programme please visit our website.

2. The Faculty of Public Health (FPH) is the leading professional body for public health specialists in the UK. It aims to promote and protect the health of the population, and improve health services, by maintaining professional and educational standards, advocating on key public health issues, and providing practical information and guidance for public health professionals. http://www.fph.org.uk

3. Public health is about improving and protecting the health of groups of people, rather than about treating individual patients. Public health professionals must look at the bigger picture and then take action to promote health lifestyles, prevent disease, protect and improve general health, and improve healthcare services. The 'population' they are working for could be a rural community, an entire city, or the global population, but the principles remain the same.

The Faculty of Public Health