Obesity has become a global pandemic that could leave more than half of all adults worldwide overweight within two decades, experts said, calling for urgent action beyond just blaming people for lacking willpower.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, health, nutrition and fitness experts said the world's increasingly deadly obesity crisis needs to be tackled with the same determination policy-makers once took to fighting smoking.
With our food more and more unhealthy and our lives increasingly sedentary, answers are needed to address a crisis that is driving up diabetes, boosting heart disease and already killing 2.8 million adults per year, they said.
The current figure of 1.4 billion adults already overweight globally is set to soar, Linda Fried, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, told a panel on obesity at the annual gathering of the global elite.