Distorted Food Supply to Blame for Skyrocketing Obesity Crisis; Food Companies Must Stop Using Cheaper Sugars, Starches & Oils, International Obesity Task Force Says

Almost on the eve of Halloween, the biggest candy-pushing day of the year, the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) delivered horrifying new obesity estimates for kids.

Get ready to be downright frightened: Childhood obesity is expected to double by the end of the decade! And, this is, in part, due, the IOTF finds, to "historic food policies which have led to distorted food supplies and prices," FoodNavigator.com/Europe reports.

Just look at these alarming figures:

By 2010, almost 287 million kids around the world will be obese, and by 2015, a whopping 700 million children will be weighing down the planet.

And that's just the obese youngsters. A devastating 2 billion overweight kids will be at risk for all kinds of diseases, too.

Professor Philip James, chair of the IOTF and the Presidential Council of the Alliance, warned that : "The rapid deterioration in diet and weight-related health is already becoming very obvious. One in three people born in the USA today is expected to develop type 2 diabetes, and the rest of the world is heading in the same direction."

These scary predictions were presented by the IOTF at the McGill Integrative Health Challenge Think Tank in Montreal this week.

Meanwhile, to fight this escalating epidemic, the IOTF released a new report, "Global strategies to prevent childhood obesity: Forming a societal plan that works," which appropriately calls for a mutli-sector approach, encompassing food and beverage industries, economists and government, as FoodNavigator.com/Europe explains.

In more dignified language, of course, the IOTF basically politely blasts food and beverage companies, suggesting that they really need to get their act together and do away with those "cheaper oils, starches and sugars" and switch to a more healthy, nutritious focus.

Meanwhile, the report calls for removing subsidies from oil, fats and sugars, and promoting fruit and vegetables production to encourage consumption.

In particular, the report suggests 10 immediate measures, including changes to labeling, marketing, pricing availability and trade, to halt the "cataclysmic slide."

In addition to making recommendations, the IOTF's new report makes several very important observations on how food and beverage companies have been doing business:

In fact, these companies "originally advanced by the three traditional methods: competition on price, the ready availability of their products, and by promotional marketing."

Furthermore, the report continues: "standardizing production, increasing portion sizes, targeting children and now penetrating the huge opportunities of the developing world markets, have been and remain priorities for major national and international food and drink companies as well as other commercial enterprises."

Special thanks to the on-top-of-the-news FoodNavigator.com/Europe for summarizing the report's suggestions, which include introducing traffic light nutrition labels, based on WHO targets for fats, sugar and salt.

Here's how FoodNavigator.com/Europe summarizes some of the suggested changes. And I'm quoting the article from Stephen Daniells here:

Marketing
Children should be protected from marketing of unhealthy products from TV, Internet, in-school promotions, and so on. Government is responsible to ensure compliance.

Trade
Trade distortions that favour sugar and fat over-production should be removed, and fruit and vegetable production should be promoted. Western agricultural subsidy regimes should be dismantled.

Pricing
Pricing should favour fruit and vegetable consumption, and discourage high fat and sugar foods. Prices should be increased to discourage consumption of these high fatty, sugary and salty (HFSS) foods.

Quality Control
Government should apply nutritional and activity standards in premises for children, like nurseries and schools. Businesses could also promote such measures.

See the FoodNavigator.com/Europe story for suggested changes in the areas of food availability, farm policies, plannning, cross government/business pro-health policy making, and availability.