I definitely agree - obesity reflects the food environment.

I wish I had written this piece!

Jacob Shelley presents the case for simplifying health policy by framing obesity as an accidental risk from a calorie-heavy food environment. Children learn to eat too much for their energy needs from parents and others who encourage over-consumption. Since when have you seen parents encouraging toddlers to move more?

www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-12-1042.pdf

And apparently, parents aren't very realistic about their toddlers' size anyway...

http://pcmlifestyle.com/2012/05/is-your-toddler-overweight-study-says-most-moms-cant-tell/
[Image credit: from the linked article "Is you toddler overweight?"]

Don't mess with my insides, OK?

Flexocrats: The Donut Is Not The Problem, It's Us

It's all very well to say we have to live in the same food-abundant and exercise-deficient environment no matter what happens in Westernised economies, but I don't want you messing with my insides! Having distrusted aspartame and Xenical for their "interference" with bodily "expectations" of nutrition and thus metabolism, I don't want to see scientists invent something that will artificially speed up my metabolism and do untold harm to another aspect of it! What if they discovered something that worked fine for about five years and then started to turn your liver cells into cancer because their functions had been subverted?

I still say we have to establish old-fashioned habits in childhood and make the environment fit the human body, not the other way round. Farmers could even get better prices for their produce if it wasn't put through all the artificial processes we impose on food so we can put it in plastic and make it last forever!

Teaching the public the truth about food and obesity

Brief 4: Public engagement with science - NeuroFAST, NeuroFAST

This account of a presentation about food, addiction and obesity is so good it makes me want to get something like this started in Australia. I thnk it would be worthwhile for the government Preventive health Taskforce or a sponsored NGO to tour the whole country. The style of presentation and inclusion of the audience in the nitty gritty of debate seems as good as any I've heard.

Let's give it a go!