The government has announced a £372m anti-obesity strategy aimed at ‘transforming the environment’ in which people in the UK live.

The strategy includes a £75m ‘aggressive’ campaign to promote healthy living to parents.

Ministers will also consider offering obese people cash or voucher incentives to lose weight.

According to Health Secretary Alan Johnson, “tackling obesity is the most significant public and personal health challenge facing our society”.

Close to a quarter of British adults and nearly a fifth of children are obese after sharp increases in the last decade. The main measures to have emerged from this strategy are:

• Early identification of at risk families with immediate support offered
• Make cooking lessons compulsory for children
• Increase children’s activity levels
• Work with the food industry to agree a universal labelling system
• A review of junk food advertising
• Limit fast food outlets close to schools

Tackling child obesity is seen as the main aim for government with a pledge to significantly reduce levels by 2020.

Schools and employers will be given more of a responsibility to promote healthy living to their children and workers respectively.

However, Johnson sounded a note of caution for those that might think it is an easy challenge, “the core of the problem is simple – we eat too much and we do too little exercise. The solution is more complex.”

Source: www.bbc.co.uk, 23 January

Photograph: www.istock.com, Brian Toro