WHO: Governments should regulate fast food to slow obesity

If government wants to slow obesity, fast food prices and convenience should be applied to healthier foods and vice versa. Or it could focus on educating people and encouraging the practice of Preventative medicine.
Instead it's gonna keep letting big corn dictate food prices and get tied up in legislation that helps only the people who don't need it.
Not a big fan of government meddling, tbh.

Yeah, because we can't get fat off of food we make at home... or at Applebee's.... Seriously, what's the government going to do... give us all rations that meet a caloric limit every day? I think not.

Shouldn't the WHO be worrying about curing AIDS, malaria and all those other things that are measurably fatal. Or maybe giving back some money to their parent UN to do something constructive in Syria and other conflict zones. Developed countries are grown up and can work this stuff out for themselves.

Shouldn't the WHO be worrying about curing AIDS, malaria and all those other things that are measurably fatal. Or maybe giving back some money to their parent UN to do something constructive in Syria and other conflict zones. Developed countries are grown up and can work this stuff out for themselves.

Im more worried about the number of parents not vaccinating their kids. Polio scares me more than mcdonalds.

Are they going to remove all high caloric foods from grocery stores too? Take my wine and cheese from me and Im going to blow something up. My cheese is 100 calories an ounce! A mcChicken is 300 calories. You do the math.

I agree let them try and take my favs...

But I am Canadian so maybe we don't have to worry.

Misleading headline, as this isn't a WHO policy statement. It's a proposed possible part of a solution to obesity postulated by a researcher in the discussion section of a scientific research article published in a WHO journal.

High five for actually reading the article before posting.

I'd be interested in how they defined "fast food" precisely. Cheap, quickly available food that can be eaten "on the go" has been a staple of urban diets since at least Greek antiquity.

Who is going to pay for this regulation?

Cigarettes have put the risks on the pack for years. People still smoke. Hell, I just quit and I'm fit and eat 100% whole food diet.

People do what they want. Blaming advertising is a joke. Blaming fast food is a scapegoat for fat lazy ****s.

/thread

Not as much as they used to. Years and years of taxes, campaigning, and demonization have paid off to some degree.

So here is an interesting article.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/2/who-tighter-economicregulationneededtoreverseobesityepidemic.html

"Unless governments take steps to regulate their economies, the invisible hand of the market will continue to promote obesity worldwide with disastrous consequences for future public health and economic productivity," said Roberto De Vogli of the University of California, Davis, who led the study.

The researchers compared the number of fast food transactions with body mass index (BMI) in 25 high-income countries between 1999 and 2008.

They found that, as the average number of annual fast food transactions increased from 26.61 to 32.76 per person, average BMI increased from 25.8 to 26.4.

Thoughts??

So, in 10 years, people ate fast food 6 more times per year, and the BMI metric increased by less than half a point. Yeah, I totally see the correlation there. Oh wait, no I don't. :huh:

Terrible idea, terrible conclusion, obvious agenda pushing.

Misleading headline, as this isn't a WHO policy statement. It's a proposed possible part of a solution to obesity postulated by a researcher in the discussion section of a scientific research article published in a WHO journal.

It's like the difference between saying "US Federal Government Wants to Ban Football" and an article about brain injuries having the line "to eliminate football-related brain injuries, football may have to be eliminated entirely" in the discussion portion of an article published in a CDC journal.

Interesting.

Personally, I'm not sure that regulation of fast foods in terms of limiting it is a good idea anyway. They can be eaten as part of a healthy balanced diet and eating them occasionally doesn't cause weight gain; It's eating them in excessive quantities that causes weight gain. I have never really enjoyed fast food very much, and still got fat. In my case, it was chocolate and baked goods. Punishing people who eat fast food in moderation because of people who don't doesn't seem good.

That said I would support mandatory calorie and nutritional labelling, and a ban on "supersize" promotions etc. in fast food and other restaurants. It would have to be flexible enough so as not to disadvantage smaller restaurants - calorie certification can be costly.

I think personal responsibility is the key, although that doesn't seem to be working very well!

Education is also probably helpful, in particular teaching people to think for themselves and verify facts - my uncle thinks that eating avocado will prevent absorption of all other fats, so he can eat as many chips and fried foods as he likes and not get fat as long as he eats avocado. This is thanks to a sensationalist article from a tabloid newspaper.

Ultimately though, this is definitely a case of "you can take a horse to water, but you can't stop it eating on the way."