Current rates of obesity in Western nations are dangerous and unsustainable.
Because obesity correlates so closely with diabetes and heart disease, countries such as the United States (where two-thirds of the adult population are overweight or obese) face massively increased health expenditures in the coming years, not to mention more widespread individual suffering from these conditions.
Largely due to the need to combine evidence-based methods (less caloric intake, more exercise) with recognition of the rights of individuals to make their own personal health decisions, solutions to this problem have not been implemented anywhere on a broad scale.
I remain very interested in the ways that other nations approach the problem, in the hopes that successful models can be created and then emulated elsewhere. In this light, the action by Argentina’s senate this week declaring obesity a disease caught my eye.
Changing the words we use to identify something can be meaningful or meaningless, depending on whether action steps follow. In the case of Argentina, here’s how it appears to be ready to play out:
Argentine senators have approved a bill declaring obesity and other eating disorders diseases covered by the nation’s public and private health care programs.
The lawmakers unanimously backed the “Obesity Law” Wednesday, saying that fighting obesity, anorexia and bulimia is in the national interest.
Patients can now seek treatment under Argentine health programs. The law also prohibits the media from releasing diets that aren’t backed by a health professional and requires that high-calorie foods carry a warning label. [emphasis added]
The bill already had been approved by the lower house.
The key points here, aside from the required insurance coverage, are the warning labels on high-calorie foods (hopefully in bright letters with large fonts) and the media restrictions.
Here in the U.S., such media restrictions would almost certainly be unconstitutional. Even if they were legal, it’s not hard find a health professional somewhere willing to endorse all but the most outlandish diet proposals.
However, the warning label idea seems worth pursuing, with tobacco warnings as the model. We probably haven’t reached critical mass yet politically for this kind of move, but current trends are such that I wouldn’t be surprised to see such a decision in the next five years.
