Govt obesity plan ‘smothered in jargon’
UK anti-obesity campaigns are so “smothered in jargon” they are nearly impossible to understand, according to a consultant in today’s British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The Labour government’s most recent campaign, Change4Life, exemplified the problems at the heart of the government’s approach, Nigel Hawkes explained.
He rejects the movement’s assumption that obesity is a societal problem, dismissing the belief that the environment and culture are to blame for people becoming overweight.
“The danger of wrapping an issue such as obesity up in the language of sociology and systems analysis is that it all begins to seem impossibly complicated,” Mr Hawkes said.
“It is as if one needs to solve all the problems of society in order to tackle one relatively small sub-problem.”
After all the unnecessary language is cleared away, he argued, there are no actual lessons to learn about preventing obesity.
The government launched its Change4Life scheme earlier this year in an attempt to prevent 60 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women becoming obese by 2050.
