Fighting obesity - Junk food is as dangerous as tobacco

IT took millions of deaths and decades of campaigning before the western world realised it had no alternative but to confront the tobacco giants to reduce the spiralling death toll caused by smoking and the costs it imposed on national health services.

Despite this huge shift in consciousness, tobacco lobbyists ignored ever-stronger scientific evidence of the catastrophic effect smoking had on individuals and those who shared smokers’ living or working space.

For too long, the tobacco industry won the cultural war by depicting their opponents as ill-informed do-gooders. The industry spent, in today’s terms if not in the terms of the day, billions in sponsorship, advertising and product placement to try to sell more tobacco. It ruthlessly used its vast resources to turn more and more people into smokers, despite knowing the likelihood of causing fatal illnesses. They still do this right across Asia, Africa and in South America as if their new customers were any less susceptible to tobacco illnesses than we are.