EU & USA: Verbraucherinformationen entscheidend im Kampf gegen Fettleibigkeit[en] 

Obesity is one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. Since the 1980s, the number of those affected in the EU has tripled and continues to increase at an alarming rate, especially among children. It is estimated that, at present, 7% of total EU healthcare costs are spent treating obesity-related illness.

The first ever EU-US conference on obesity took place in Brussels on 11-12 May 2006. The event gathered some 150 government and Commission officials, members of the EU Platform for Action, industry players, NGOs and consumer representatives from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss and compare good practice on ongoing and new initiatives regarding health, nutrition and physical activity. The issues addressed included food advertising, labelling, consumer education and research.

The current EU initiatives addressing the problem of obesity are the following: 

• Platform for action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health ,
• Member state Network on Nutrition and Physical Activity, 
• Labelling - a process of agreeing new rules on the use of health and nutrition claims on food labels is currently under way, 
• Working with other policy areas such as sports and education,
• Support for obesity-related projects such as the one on childhood obesity  and Eurodiet .

The Commission also recently adopted a Green Paper on the promotion of a healthy diet and physical activity aiming to stimulate discussion about effective initiatives to promote healthy diets and physical activity and to define best practices.

"Markets should go before mandates and the invisible hand of markets [industry self-regulation] should be privileged to the heavy hand of governments," outlined the deputy secretary of the US Department of health and human services, Alex Azar, the American view on the issue and emphasised the importance of providing more info on healthy diets to the consumers so that they can do informed choices. Further, "there also needs to be a business case for healthy food," he added meaning that the markets will produce healthy and tasty food if there's a market demand for it. 

"It is consumers who will decide what to buy, what to eat and how much. The target is to enable consumers to make informed choices, based on information which is accurate, truthful and not misleading," said Health and Consumer protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou. 

"There are some common principles on which we can all agree, including the need to focus attention on calories as opposed to specific food categories, to recognise the importance commercial communications can play in promoting healthier living and to encourage physical activity," said Director General of CIAA, Daniela Israelachwili.

To read stakeholder reactions to the Commission's green paper on obesity, click here.