Ministers focus fight against flab on pricing, adverts

ISTANBUL, Nov 17 (Reuters) European and Central Asian ministers agreed to try to make healthy food cheaper and curb junk food adverts aimed at children in a bid to reverse a galloping obesity trend.

Ministers attending a UN World Health Organisation (WHO) obesity conference in Istanbul yesterday also agreed to reduce fat and sugar in manufactured food and improve urban planning to make cycling and walking easier.

The UN health body estimates obesity will affect one in five adults and one in 10 children by 2010 unless action is taken.

Already about 20 per cent of children in the WHO's European region, which stretches to Central Asia, are overweight, of which a third are obese. Obesity has tripled in the past two decades, and six per cent of health costs in the European region are due to adult obesity, the organisation estimates.

Officials said the WHO-backed charter approved yesterday, although non-binding, would give extra clout to health authorities and help convince the public of the scale of the problem.

''The charter... gives more arguments and more authority to health ministries,'' Felix Lobo, chairman of the Spanish Health Ministry's Food Safety Agency, told Reuters.

The charter calls for ''economic measures that facilitate healthy food choices'' and for regulations to reduce commercial promotion of energy-dense foods and beverages, particularly to children.

''Each individual country, having signed it, will have to have a look at how it measures up,'' British Minister of State for Public Health Caroline Flint said.

Delegates say the fight against obesity is hindered by a lack of evidence as to which methods work, making it trickier than the campaign against tobacco.

''What we're still lacking is a rigorous evaluation of what works at scale,'' World Bank nutrition specialist Dr Meera Shekar said, adding no project tried so far had had an impact.

While governments saw a direct result from increasing tax on tobacco, the impact of changing food prices to spur consumption of healthier products was less clear.

''This (charter) is a first step with something that needs to go much further,'' Swiss Secretary of State for Health Thomas Zeltner told Reuters, adding a fifth of children in his country were overweight.

Reuters SHB GC0914