Only a systemic, sustained portfolio of anti-obesity initiatives, implemented on a large scale will be sufficient to overcome rising obesity. No single group in society – government, retailers, consumer goods companies, restaurants, employers, media organisations, educators, healthcare providers, or individuals – can offset rising obesity on their own. Yet efforts to address obesity have been piecemeal thus far. To date, there have been pockets of excellent interventions delivered around the world, but there's been insufficient attempt to take an integrated view on what it will really take to reduce the public health burden across the board. Moreover, the global debate on how to respond has become polarised, and in some cases deeply antagonistic – partly because the response required is so complex, and spread across such a range of actors in society. This is proving a barrier to progress.
More research is needed, but action should start now
The MGI analysis is far from offering a complete picture as research into obesity has many gaps and data is of variable quality. There clearly needs to be more investment in obesity research. Globally, such investment is estimated at about $4 billion a year – but this is only 0.2% of the social cost of obesity.
Given the increasing severity of the obesity crisis, we cannot afford to wait for perfect evidence on which interventions work and which don’t – especially given many of them are behavioural interventions for which it is difficult to conduct randomised controlled trials, and which are, in any case, low-risk. On many of the interventions, there is enough evidence to know that they work for at least some segments of the population and are low-risk and low-cost. We should therefore learn as we go and make a start. The knowledge we already have justifies much more action against obesity than is currently typically taking place.