Fighting obesity - It’s time to take the gloves off

Millions of people around the developed world died horribly and prematurely because for too long we pretended tobacco smoking was not the toxic killer we now know it to be. Tens of thousands of those people died in Ireland.

The resources once used in the Western world by tobacco companies to sustain that great lie are now used in developing societies, societies that do not enjoy the protection of a proactive, interventionist and powerful public health policy. After decades of “ifs” and “maybes” we finally confronted the tobacco conglomerates and though far, far too many people still smoke progress is being made albeit more slowly than is ideal.

Unfortunately it seems to be a part of the human experience that as soon as one problem reaches something like a resolution another presents itself. We are back at the point we were at 50 years ago with smoking, except today the plague is obesity.