Editorial: Heavy-handed rules won't help the obese

So alarming are the statistics that there is no doubt New Zealand faces an obesity epidemic. One in seven of pre-teen children is grossly overweight and a prime candidate for serious health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and hip and joint problems. If nothing is done to salvage the situation, individuals and the community will pay an increasingly heavy cost. The means of repair must, however, be rational and reasonable, not a panicky response that flies wide of the target.

Perhaps inevitably, given the degree of concern among public health lobby groups, some radical, and inappropriate, solutions are being proposed. As the Herald reports today in the final part of our series on obesity, they are given an airing in a discussion document on planned public health legislation. Probably the most extreme is a suggestion that access to junk food should be regulated. There could be a legal age of purchase, or limits on the number, size and placement of outlets. The same document also canvasses a ban on the advertising of fast food.

That last option seems to be at the forefront of the thinking of a health lobby group called Fight the Obesity Epidemic. Advertising, however, is simply an easy target. A ban would not address the public behaviour that underlies the obesity epidemic, just as the setting of an age limit would only encourage transgression.

Obesity is not solely a product of inappropriate nutrition; in many ways children enjoy a more healthy diet than the fat-drenched fare eaten by their parents and grandparents. Equally, it must be associated with inadequate physical activity.

A spokeswoman for the Dietetic Association summed up the problem well. Many parents, she said, were not at home when their children returned from school and had little choice but to let television play babysitter. Other parents were overly protective and would not allow their children outside. And others simply allowed their own inactivity to filter through to their children. The upshot is that children no longer keep fit by playing in the street or at the local park. Instead, they watch television, play computer games or surf the internet.

Clearly, a health strategy to cure the obesity epidemic must focus on lifestyle as well as diet. Equally clearly, the key element should be informing and educating parents. They must encourage their children to be more physically active, perhaps by joining them in activities. They must be persuaded to allow their children out of the home while at the same time warning them of the potential dangers. And they must be made aware of the healthy food that should be at the top of shopping lists.

A ban on fast-food advertising and such like would achieve none of that. A far more measured approach is required, such as that adopted by the Kids in Action Pasefika Challenge, run by South Seas Health Care. Children are given individual weight-loss programmes and a power of encouragement, perhaps most notably by role models in their community. Crucially, parents are required to plug into the programme. Thus, the children get support, not the false economy of an overbearing and restrictive environment.

Junk-food purveyors themselves should also play a part. In any debate on public health, their name, fairly or unfairly, stands to be blackened. They could help themselves by adopting a stance similar to that of McDonald's in France. In advertorials in that country's women's press, the fast-food giant has preached the virtues of a balanced diet, and conceded that one visit to its premises a week is quite enough.

Such initiatives strike the right note. Dollops of information will combat the obesity epidemic far more effectively than a starvation diet of heavy-handed and misguided regulation.