A remarkable change of gear has taken place in the often ill-informed debate on obesity. It follows several years of endeavour by hundreds of experts who contributed to the Foresight report (pdf), Tackling Obesities: Future Choices, and the huge volume of associated scientific research, evidence and analysis, garnered under the wise leadership of the government's chief scientist Sir David King.
As the report was launched on Wednesday October 17, the prime minister spoke at question time of dealing with the advertising of "unacceptable foods," signalling his dissatisfaction with the continued peddling of junk food, and with Ofcom's fudged compromise on TV advertising. He also flagged up better labelling regulation and the need for more time spent on physical activities in school.
The health secretary, Alan Johnson, emphasising the challenge of dealing with obesity at a societal level, likened it to that of climate change. He got it right - as the Foresight's snakes and ladders board graphic of the complexity of government, economic and social interactions affecting obesity vividly depicted.
The climate change analogy may have puzzled those still hanging onto the mantra that individuals are alone responsible for the imbalance of energy in and energy out, but it was remarkable that shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley, while accusing the government of dozing through the past alarm bells (but not recalling they were also ringing for previous governments that specialised in selling off school sports fields) demonstrated he has a much more sophisticated grasp of the issue. He wants greater product reformulation, and a combined traffic light and GDA labelling scheme so that consumers are not duped. He agreed that what was really needed was a cultural shift, technological innovation, a framework of legislation and government action, as well as individuals to respond.
It is no longer acceptable to simplistically blame the hapless susceptible individual for their personal failings in gaining weight because food technology, the social and economic environment, ubiquitous cheap junk food, clever marketing and unscrupulous targeting of children, along with intense lobbying from vested commercial interests to maintain a hands-off approach towards regulation, have all in some way contributed to making being overweight or obese virtually the norm today. We are in danger of making the co-morbidities of obesity - type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer - a much greater norm that they need to be.
With hindsight it is easy to flag up all the missed opportunities, and even perhaps the wilful neglect of the issue of obesity. After all there has been a succession of weighty reports from the 1970s onwards, and even in the mid-1990s when it was impossible to ignore the burgeoning obesity rates in children as well as adults, the issue was dodged.
The latest forecasts are alarming, and it isn't just that we'll all be fat by the middle of the 21st century. The alarm is sounding today, for within seven years obesity will have led to a 25% increase in type 2 diabetes, a major increase in heart disease and stroke, and a £22bn bill - three times greater than present costs - for the health service to pocket.
There can no longer be any excuse for inaction. Business leaders and boardrooms must ask themselves if they can afford to continue profiting from selling "unacceptable" foods to use Gordon Brown's words. Advertisers must think again before working out how to text their messages into the playground and get under the parental radar via kids' websites, as well as on television.
Must we wait for the wheels of regulation and legislation to grind in order to impose change when the much-vaunted corporate social responsibility of many commercial concerns should lead them to responsible market behaviour in any case?
With Foresight, rather than hindsight, the challenge is urgent, inescapable, and like climate change, demands that everyone contributes to the solution.
