Speaking
at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting
Monday, Kelly Brownell, Ph.D., of Yale University said that a focus on
children might provide a politically savvy opening to developing reforms
against the obesity epidemic.
“Children are to the obesity crisis what secondhand smoke has been
to tobacco,” Brownell said.
Diets, medication and lifestyle changes to combat obesity are having a
weak effect on public health, Brownell says, suggesting that the best tactic
may be to stop obesity among the young.
“I don’t believe we can treat this problem away. We absolutely
have to go for prevention,” Brownell said.
According to Harold Goldstein, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., of the California Center
for Public Health Advocacy, there has been a four-fold increase in obesity
among children in the past 40 years.
Researchers are still debating whether the dramatic rise
is mostly due to changes in personal behavior or a “toxic environment” of
low-cost, high-fat foods and less exercise, “but to the extent that
it is the environment, new public policy is required,” Goldstein
said.
Junk food advertising aimed at children is a particularly vexing problem
facing parents and public health officials, according to Margo Wootan,
D.Sc., of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Baby bottles shaped like soda cans and kid-friendly snack
food Web sites are only some of this “relentless barrage,” she
said.
Wootan called for Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services
to work on a bill that would set advertising standards limiting the kinds
of food that could be marketed to children.
Similar restrictions already apply to alcohol and tobacco
advertising, but “the food industry has basically been issued a free pass to our
hearts and minds,” Brownell said.
But others cautioned that it will be difficult to use
the tactics of last decade’s tobacco wars in the obesity fight.
“It’s not going to be as simple to make McDonald’s and
Coke into villains,” concluded Robert Ross, M.D., of the California
Endowment.
