The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released a major report on obesity. It forecasts that every country in the developed world is likely to see rising rates of obese and overweight people over the next ten years. The report includes a table of fattest nations: the top three being the US, Mexico and New Zealand.
OECD says governments must fight fat
The OECD report examines the current obesity epidemic, giving new comparative data, trends and projections across OECD countries and outlining causes and costs.
OECD Health Ministers discussed this report on 7-8 October 2010 in Paris.
Read the report: Obesity and The Economics of Prevention: Fit not Fat
Read the executive summary (PDF)
Read more about the OECD report: OECD website, 23 Sep 2010
Americans beat 33 countries to win OECD obesity prize
Nutritionist Marion Nestle comments on the OECD report’s conclusion, saying “buried in this paragraph are some important concepts: societies need to change social norms as well as individual behaviour, and governments need to intervene to make the social environment more conducive to healthier practices.”
Read more in Food Politics, 24 Sep 2010
USA is fattest of 33 countries, report says
USA Today lists some of the OECD report’s recommendations and quotes Neville Rigby, director of the European Obesity Forum as saying the report “makes the case for a much more robust set of government and societal actions”. If society waits for business and individuals to do what is really needed, “the obesity epidemic will simply get much, much worse.”
Read more in USA Today, 24 Sep 2010
And now for something completely different – obesity stats
Argues that wealthy countries can do something about rising childhood obesity rates and uses France as an example.
Read more in The Economist (blog), 28 Sep 2010