The UK Government's Obesity Initiative And Ill-Judged Partnerships With Companies That Fuel Obesity

An Editorial in this week's Lancet criticises the strategy of the three-year anti-obesity initiative launched by the UK government in the new year. The campaign aims to make the UK the ‘first major nation to reverse the rising tide of obesity’. The Editorial criticises the simplistic television advertisement for the initiative, which features a stone-age family in the shape of cartoon-like dough-figures chasing a mammoth and hitting a dinosaur over its head with a club and moves to a modern family eating pizza and playing electronic games. But the Editorial says this advertisement is not the most astonishing aspect of the campaign. It says: ‘It beggars belief that the government has decided to allow sponsorship by commercial companies in the order of £200 million, in addition to £75 million of public funding. Companies include PepsiCo and Kelloggs - the makers of the very products that contribute to obesity. Party to this sponsorship arrangement are also supermarkets that display rows upon rows of sugary snacks, cereals, and soft drinks. The government justifies its decision by the need to tap into the power of brand loyalties, and the fact that these companies have influence with the target audience. So what is the subliminal, or perhaps not so subliminal, take-home message when PepsiCo brings us sports personalities who advocate exercise? If you do exercise, it is OK to drink Pepsi and eat crisps?’ The Editorial concludes: ‘Nobody doubts that innovative ways are urgently needed to achieve behaviour change at a population level for the prevention of an impending obesity epidemic and its related threats to health. Social marketing principles - the use of commercial marketing techniques to promote socially desirable outcomes-are a potentially useful tool in addition to regulation, education, and the provision of real and appropriate choice. Before embarking on such a new approach, however, there needs to be a thorough understanding of what works on the basis of reliable data. And ill-judged partnerships with companies that fuel obesity should have been avoided."’

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