Ebook On the European Commission's Green Paper: Healthy Diets and Physical Activities
The Commission’s Green Paper on promoting Healthy Diets and Physical Activity is triggering debate on initiatives aiming at preventing obesity. The primary objective is to create conditions under which the best practices can be adopted. Unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity are the leading causes of avoidable illness and premature death, and the rising incidence of obesity is a major public health concern in the European Union.
Many factors have to be taken into account when addressing the problem of obesity. Consequently, it calls for the development of strategies entailing a multi-stakeholder approach with action being taken at local, regional, national and European levels.
The Green Paper invites contributions from interested parties on a wide range of issues, including topics relating to nutrition and physical activity. The aim is to gather information with a view to giving a European dimension to the battle against obesity, in terms of support for and coordination of the existing national measures.
The many existing initiatives to promote healthier lifestyles all across the EU contribute to raising consumer awareness and illustrate an existing significant level of concern among society. A number of controlled intervention trials, mostly school- based, show some improvement in health related behaviour but most have not had a significant impact on the weight status of participating children. The follow-up times vary considerably and, in most cases, the length of time over which interventions were being conducted was too short to modify weight status. But this provides also a great deal of information about how to improve interventions in the future.
Long-term interventions at community level are larger scale trials involving all stakeholders. They proved to be the only existing programmes with a significant decrease of the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the population studied. The French Fleurbaix-Laventie programme is one major initiative with community involvement, which has successfully – over a 13-year period – stemmed the growth in childhood obesity rates in two communities, whilst the obesity rates in neighbouring communities have more than doubled. Proximity to citizens, tailoring of actions to the needs and duration are critical factors of success. The EPODE programme is building on the success of the study. It has been disseminated in France and aims at developing a best practice model for further replication in other European countries. The Kiel Obesity Prevention Study in Germany also starts showing promising results. Another programme has been recently identified for promotion across Europe: the Shape Up project, a participatory project for the prevention of childhood obesity. “Shape Up” seeks to assess and influence the behaviours and social environmental conditions related to food, nutrition and physical exercise by designing and proposing real actions to promote the conditions for healthy habits and to prevent child obesity in a sustainable way.
Alarming rates of overweight and obesity among children has also triggered many debates on the role of TV advertising on children’s food choices and preferences. Thorough scientific reviews of fast growing science to help better understand the impact of TV advertising on children’s preferences, food consumption and behaviour.
But as well as there is no link proven between TV advertising and obesity, there is no scientific evidence to demonstrate that advertising restrictions could impact the incidence of obesity. TV advertising is already a highly regulated area. The debates resulted in harmonizing the existing self-regulatory measures across the EU and strengthening them as well. Consequently, the debate on food marketing to children keeps evolving and somewhat shifts away from new restriction approaches only. It is focused on how to best encourage the use of advertising to promote balanced diets and healthy lifestyles. Investments to raise consumer information and develop educational programmes for children in particular are also being considered.
The increasing prevalence of obesity is a challenge for society. That implies that population education strategies will need a solid base of policy and environment based changes to be effective in eventually reversing these trends.
A number of gaps and issues to be addressed have been identified. This calls strongly for a number of actions at Community level and future research in various areas which are addressed at the end of this paper.
CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION: TACKLING OBESITY
2 ACTIONS TO PROMOTE PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
- 2.1 Review of existing lifestyle campaigns in various European Countries
2.2 Intervention programmes
3 BEST PRACTICES
- 3.1 The Fleurbaix and Laventie Ville Santé study (FL)
3.2 The EPODE study (Ensemble Prévenons l’Obésité Des Enfants) - The « EPODE EUROPEAN NETWORK » project
3.3 Other ongoing intervention studies
3.4 The ICAPS study (Intervention Centered on Adolescents’ Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour)
3.5 Shape Up Europe
4 COMMERCIAL COMMUNICATION AND ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN
- 4.1 Research on the effect of television advertising on children’s food preferences and choices in the context of rising national and international levels of childhood obesity
4.1.1 The Hastings study (2003)
4.1.2 The Ofcom report (2004)
4.1.3 The Ofcom report (2006)
4.1.4 The IOM report (USA, 2005)
- 4.2 Different approaches to advertising to children in the Member states
4.3 Effects of the different approaches to advertising to children in the Member States in tackling obesity amongst children
4.4 Conclusion
5 ADDED VALUE OF EU ACTIONS
6 REFERENCES
7 GLOSSARY
8 ANNEX 1
9 ANNEX 2
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