How should we go about addressing inactivity and obesity across Europe? It’s a challenge facing us all at an individual and a societal level, and one that health clubs across the continent strive to address on a daily basis. It’s also a challenge the European Union (EU) is attempting to confront head-on.
Since 2007, there’s been an EU strategy on nutrition, health and physical activity to help fight obesity and the chronic diseases that obesity is linked to. However, the EU has acknowledged that this problem can’t be tackled with a single-pronged approach, but rather with a co-ordinated, holistic approach aimed at specific objectives: promoting healthy eating, promoting awareness of obesity-related health issues, reformulating food to make it healthier, creating opportunities for exercise, providing the right environment so physical activity becomes part of people’s lives, involving schools and local communities, and so on.
It therefore set up the EU Platform for Diet, Health and Physical Activity – an action-orientated, co-operative kind of ‘club’ that meets four times a year and that brings stakeholders from across the food and drink, medical and health, and physical activity sectors together with other interest group representatives. Encompassing everything from industry bodies and health NGOs to consumer groups, its aim is to help reverse the trend towards obesity and inactivity.
Welcome to the club
A majority of the Platform members are from, or have a direct interest in, the food and drink industry – including powerful groupings of strategists and lobbyists. Big hitters such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Danone are represented through a number of European associations. However, EuropeActive (formerly EHFA) has also been a member of the Platform since the early days, representing a minority of associations that are promoting health-enhancing physical activity.
The EU Platform is the responsibility of DG Health and Consumers (Sanco) of the EU Commission, which also chairs the meetings. Typically at each meeting there will be around 60 delegates, and twice yearly there are high-level meetings that include government representatives from EU Member States. At these times, the director general and/or commissioner will attend to give updates on progress and priorities.
It’s an important forum for the exchange of information and debates related to several policy areas, such as the provision of information to consumers at the point of sale, guidelines on daily amounts (GDA) labelling, the role of physical activity in reducing obesity, marketing to children, and reformulation of food and drink products to reduce sugar, salt and fat.
Platform Members pledge actions they will take to contribute to the overall Platform aim – namely reversing the obesity trend. There are six fields: marketing and advertising; composition of foods (reformulation), availability of healthy food options, portion sizes; consumer information, like labelling; education including lifestyle modification; physical activity promotion; and advocacy and information exchange.
The EU Commission has made several recommendations and directives off the back of Platform outcomes. These relate to the increasing regulation of advertising standards for food and drink, looking at reducing fat and sugar content of food, and reviewing food labelling requirements. It’s also progressing with a specific strategy on childhood obesity. Here we review two member projects.
