MEP calls for EU obesity day

Health professionals have endorsed ALDE MEP Magor Csibi's call to create a European obesity day.

Estimates suggest that there will be 150 million obese adults (20 per cent of the population) and 25 million obese children and adolescents (10 per cent of the population) in Europe by 2010.

And Csibi, a member of the parliament's environment, public health and food safety committee, told reporters on Wednesday that creating an obesity day would help tackle the problem and involve European citizens in finding solutions.

Obesity day, to be held annually on May 16, would help raise awareness of Europe's growing obese and overweight population, Csibi argued.

"European citizens must be aware that this is a quite important issue and obesity day will actively involve European citizens in the fight against obesity," he said.

"My role as an MEP is to involve everybody in shaping the fight against obesity in the European Union."

Csibi pointed out that no commission representative was available to take part in the debate, and claimed this highlighted that the European institutions "like to speak about this issue but are not committed as strongly as we are saying".

"Unfortunately, looking at the numbers we can see that our policies are not as successful as we are expecting them to be," he said.

"We need to create solutions with the European citizens and not just for the European citizens."

Dr David Haslam, clinical director of the National Obesity Forum in the UK, said he offered obesity day his full support.

"Even losing just a small amount of weight can make a vast difference and prevent problems such as diabetes and heart disease in the future," he said.

"I think prevention of obesity is very important, but even if prevention is 100 per cent successful and not one single person gains any more weight we'll still have a problem of obese adults who will create an epidemic of diabetes and heart disease.

"So prevention is important but treatment of obesity is just as important, just as crucial"

Professor Edzard Ernst, from the UK's Peninsula Medical School, spoke of the dangers of the bogus slimming market.

With virtually every obese person tempted to try some sort of alternative medicine, he warned, "the general public believes that alternative medicine is natural and safe, and our research has shown that this is not the case."

He said that all sliming remedies have safety issues and "generate more harm than good".

Bogus medicines were readily available through online pharmacies he said, adding, "I think this situation is deplorable, embarrassing and foremost dangerous."

Speaking on behalf of patients, Jean-Paul Allonsius, the president and founder of the Belgian Association of Obese Patients (BOLD), said that most of the products in circulation actually create obesity "as the more diets you undertake, the harder it is to achieve permanent weight loss".

"A national obesity day is a call to action," he said.

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