In a special series on obesity, The Lancet haspublished four papers, the first of which warns that nearly half of all U.S. men and women will be obese by 2030. Led by Dr. Claire Wang at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, researchers caution obesity will replace tobacco as the single most preventable cause of chronic non-communicable diseases.
According to a second study led by Dr. Boyd Swinburn and Dr. Gary Sacks of the WHO Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Melbourne, half a billion adults are obese worldwide, while 170 million children are either overweight or obese.
And, in yet another study on the topic from the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Steven Gortmaker asserts that the government should be doing more to combat obesity in the U.S., including adding taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and restricting certain food and beverage ads that are marketed to children.
First, these obesity predictions are what I consider the worst case scenario, says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. Second, the proposed policies outlined by Dr. Gortmaker are just more of the same measures that will do absolutely nothing to fight obesity. They do little to actually change how people eat.
Yet ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava observes,While I too consider the idea of taxing certain bad foods and drinks a simplistic remedy for obesity, I do consider these projections to be an early warning about future obesity increases that we should take seriously."