The UK government’s Foresight programme & the Government Office for Science recently published their full report on the theme of obesity, titled Foresight – Tackling Obesities: Future Choices.

“By 2050, Foresight modelling indicates that 60% of adult men, 50% of adult women and about 25% of all children under 16 could be obese. Obesity increases the risk of a range of chronic diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease and also cancer and arthritis. The financial impact to society attributable to obesity, at current prices, is estimated to become an additional £45.5 billion per year by 2050 with a seven fold increase in NHS costs alone. “

The study arguments for an integrative approach in tackling the issue and notes how the challenge bears resemblence to the societal shift needed to counter climate change. Also regarding obesity, multiple levels of societal scale need to be addressed, i.e. personal, family, community and national. “It requires partnership between government, science, business and civil society.”

Watch the video summing up the 4 future scenario’s here or check here for more background reading.

Related posts:

1. obesity system influence diagram
2. foresight & ethnography
3. Jerusalem 2050

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 14:33 and is filed under foresight, future, projects, publication, scenarios, society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.