The theme of this year’s World Obesity Day on 4th March 2024 is “Let’s talk about obesity and … our world.” We fully support the idea that everyone needs to be talking more about obesity. Obesity and overweight will affect half of the world’s population by 2035, yet remain misunderstood as chronic diseases whose incidence is increasing, including at ever younger ages.1 Overweight and obesity are currently leading causes of preventable death and disability—not least through their contribution to major non communicable diseases, including type II diabetes, stroke, coronary heart disease, and cancers.1 As the newly released World Obesity Federation Atlas 2024 reveals, obesity is global, affecting rich and poor countries alike.1 We need to talk about how to fix the policy environments that are fuelling obesity in most countries.2
While we encourage more people to talk more openly about obesity, we call for an end to practices that stigmatise people living with or at risk of obesity or overweight—which itself leads to weight gain.3 That requires that we raise awareness about weight stigma—among our peers, family, and friends; in healthcare and policy settings; and in the media. When we talk about obesity we should use “people first” language (i.e., describing what a person “has” rather than asserting what a person “is” and consider personal language preferences). Health promotion must be inclusive of people living with obesity and we need human rights-based approaches to tackle stigma and discrimination, especially in health systems.4 Reducing weight stigma can go a long way to creating more equitable and inclusive societies—promoting healthy bodies and minds that embrace the wellbeing of all people.5
We need to talk frankly about the drivers of obesity. To date there has been too much emphasis on the agency of people to “eat less, move more” and too little on the obesogenic environments we increasingly live, work, and play in.6 Social determinants of overweight include unhealthy environments, such as food deserts where it is difficult to buy affordable, nutritious fresh food or lack of places to exercise safely, and inequitable health systems that fail to treat obesity before patients presenting with co-morbidities.
We need to talk particularly about food systems and how to transform them through evidence-informed policy, such as fiscal measures on unhealthy food products (such as soda and sugar taxes) and front-of-pack labelling. We need to face up to the commercial determinants of obesity and condemn, challenge, and restrict the strategies deployed by powerful corporate players to achieve their market and political aims at the expense of the health of people and planet.7
While talking about and reframing the obesity narrative is an important starting point in confronting the pandemic, this must lead to political action in different fora and at all levels. We call on the United Nations General Assembly to convene a High-Level Meeting on tackling the emerging crisis of obesity. We also call on the UN to integrate an obesity lens into their negotiations on climate change at the annual Conference of Parties, on non-communicable diseases (2025), on pandemic preparedness and response (2026), on Road Safety (2026), on Universal Health Coverage (2027), and in other relevant forums, such as the Food Systems Transformation Summit.
We call on the World Health Assembly to meaningfully engage with people living with obesity. Voices of people with lived experience can help facilitate Member States’ uptake of the 2022 obesity recommendations and ensure support for the WHO Acceleration Plan to stop obesity by changing the narrative away from individual blame towards systemic and structural change.8
Governments must do much more. This includes more appropriate legislation and policy efforts to tackle the structural drivers of obesity. This includes developing strategies in compliance with the WHO obesity acceleration plan initiative. These range from regulation of unhealthy environments and access to healthy foods and physical activity, to ensuring essential obesity services are part of Universal Health Coverage—governments need to prepare health systems for the rising burden of obesity related conditions.
We call on consumers and civil society to support initiatives aimed at transforming the food and health systems that have driven and exacerbated the obesity pandemic. Additionally, we encourage people living with obesity to share their perspectives and engage in advocacy efforts to demand changes in public policy, commercial behaviour, and healthcare access.
We hope that this World Obesity Day will encourage more open and less polarised discussions around obesity. We must focus our minds on the true drivers of the pandemic and upend common myths about obesity—half of the world’s population will have overweight by 2035. These discussions can help create more accepting and tolerant societies. But above all we hope that talking about obesity will galvanise people and lead to action—preventing and managing obesity is the single most important way to reduce premature deaths due to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.9 Reducing obesity is an important way to improve the health of people and the planet.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: The authors declare their association with the World Obesity Federation. KB is Chair of its Policy and Prevention Committee. SB is President-Elect. JR is CEO.
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Provenance: not commissioned, not externally peer reviewed