In January 2008 the UK government published their comprehensive obesity prevention plan entitled ‘Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives: a Cross-Government Strategy for England’.

The vision is to be the first major nation to reverse the rising tide of obesity and overweight in the population by ensuring that everyone is able to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Our initial focus will be on children: by 2020, we aim to reduce the proportion of overweight and obese children to 2000 levels.

The major targets include:
A) Every child grows up eating well and enjoying being active.
B) The food is far healthier
C) Everyone is as active as they feel able
D) Government, businesses, local communities and others will create environments that make activity accessible, safe and the norm.

It is stated that the Government has a clear role to play in providing leadership for society to achieve this vision. (Thank you!)

Specific targets include:

Children

  • Ask all schools to develop healthy lunch box policies, so that those not yet taking up school lunches are also eating healthily
  • Invest to ensure all schools are healthy schools, including making cooking a compulsory part of the curriculum by 2011 for all 11–14 year-olds
  • Invest £75 million in an evidence-based marketing program which will inform, support and empower parents in making changes to their children’s diet and levels of physical activity
  • Invest in improving cycling infrastructure and skills in areas where child weight is a particular problem.

Healthier food choices

  • Healthy Food Code of Good Practice, in partnership with the food and drink industry to reduce to the content of saturated fat, sugar and salt
  • Allow local authorities to regulate the proliferation of fast food outlets in particular areas, e.g. near parks or schools
  • Restrict advertising of unhealthy foods to children.

Physical activity

  • Invest in a campaign to get a third of England walking at least 1,000 more steps daily by 2012
  • Invest £30 million in selected towns to develop best practice models for whole-town approaches to promoting physical activity
  • Encourage the entertainment technology industry to help parents manage the time that their children spend playing sedentary games.

Workplace health

  • Explore how companies can best promote wellness among their staff and make healthy workplaces part of their core business model
  • Pilot and evaluate a range of different approaches to using personal financial incentives to encourage healthy living, such as individuals losing weight and sustaining weight loss, eating more healthily or being consistently more physically active.

Funding

  • The Government will make available an additional £372 million for promoting the achievement and maintenance of healthy weight over the period 2008–11. This is over and above the £1.3 billion investment in school food, sport and play and the £140 million further funding for Cycling.

The UK ministers obviously are committed to act and invest in the fight against obesity. I wish more countries would be as explicit, concrete and committed.

You can download the report here.