Calorie Offsets: Environmental Policy for the Food Environment
Although obesity continues to challenge the public’s health, effective policy solutions are wanting. Borrowing from environmental protection efforts, we explored the potential for a “calorie offset” regulatory mechanism, which is similar to the carbon emission offsets used to curb green- house gas emissions, to mitigate the harmful health externalities of unhealthy food production. This approach might have a number of advantages over traditional policy tools, and warrants attention from health policymakers and industry alike. (Am J Public Health. 2015;105:e4–e6. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2015.302678)
OVER THE PAST 30 YEARS, THE
prevalence of obesity has in- creased 3-fold in many high- income countries. This increase in obesity has partially driven the current chronic disease epidemics, including diabetes mellitus, and cardiac and cerebrovascular disease.
In the United States, health demographers have suggested that obesity may underlie a forthcoming decline in life expectancy, the first in more than a century.1 Although recent reports have suggested a slowing of the rate
of obesity, particularly among children,2 this evidence has been contested.3 Obesity remains among the most important public health challenges of our time.2
INEFFECTIVE FOCUS ON INDIVIDUAL INTERVENTIONS
Efforts to curb the epidemic have largely focused on individual interventions. However, while bariatric surgery, lifestyle modification, and pharmacotherapy have each been shown to be efficacious in reducing obesity and its sequelae in randomized controlled trials, these approaches face several important challenges.
First, clinical interventions such as gastric bypass and pharmacotherapy carry potentially hazardous side effects. Second, treatment interventions are designed to help patients who are already obese. These patients will already have been exposed to obesity, which may increase risk for sequelae even in the advent of a “cure.” Third, certain
clinical interventions, such as bariatric surgery, may be less effective at the lower extremes of obesity, where there is greater population burden. Fourth, in an era where obesity
is approaching a prevalence of 40%, scaling these interventions, such as lifestyle modification and gastric bypass, poses a number of health systems challenges.