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DISCUSSION No. 129 • FSN Forum digest No. 1239
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Are there any successful policies and programmes to fight overweight and obesity?
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until 5 July 2016
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Dear Members,
Below we share the first comments received to the discussion:
Are there any successful policies and programmes to fight overweight and obesity?
Overweight and obesity are becoming a severe public health problem in many countries: 2.5 billion adults were overweight
or obese in 2014. Realizing the importance of this issue, some countries are implementing policies and programmes aimed at reducing the incidence of overweight and obesity.
This discussion aims to better understand what are the key elements for policies and programmes to succeed in fighting
overweight and obesity and what can be learned from existing initiatives.
Please read more on the
discussion webpage, also available in
French, Spanish,
Arabic,
Chinese and
Russian.
We look forward to keep exchanging on this important topic.
Your FSN Forum team
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CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED
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Emile
Houngbo, Agricultural University of Ketou (UAK), Benin
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Emile highlights the limits of the body mass index (BMI) to measure overweight and obesity. He also stresses the importance
of contextualising issues of overweight and obesity, and the need to distinguish between the individual level and the incidence at community level.
Read the contribution
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Raghavendra
Guru Srinivasan, India
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Raghavendra shares a framework to tackle overeating through taxation of food products.
Read the contribution
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Elaine
Rush, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
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Elaine presents a paper related to the "Project Energize" carried out in New Zealand. It has been running for over 10
years and includes physical activity and nutrition programmes and might serve as a model for similar practices, initiatives and policies elsewhere.
Read the contribution
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Salvador
Camacho, Heidelberg University, Germany
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Salvador provides a critical overview on the Mexican sugary drinks tax; indeed, results of this intervention do not show
a clear and straightforward impact on overweight. Often interventions tackle the symptoms and not the causes of overweight and obesity.
Read the contribution
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JC
Wandemberg, Sustainable Systems International, Ecuador
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JC Wandemberg calls for an effort to understand the factors causing overeating and criticizes the consequences of Ecuador's
"traffic light" intervention, which led people to limit their consumption of healthy foods while they continued eating products with plenty of additives and preservatives.
Read the contribution
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Roberto
Verna, Sapienza University of Rome.
Italy
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Roberto explores the problem of overweight and obesity from a broad and in-depth health perspective: it has been proved
that physical activity can provide a great contribution to health and consequently reduce health spending at country level.
Read the contribution
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Carmen
Rivas Gaitán, El Salvador
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Carmen emphasises that many existing well-intentioned policies are limited in their success by lack of awareness on the
importance of healthy dietary habits and consequently by the consumption of highly processed food.
Read the contribution
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Juliana
Kain, Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos, Chile
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Juliana shares the results of some obesity prevention programmes implemented in schools of different grades and lists
some key elements to ensure impact of policies and programmes.
Read the contribution
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