Obesity: a Ghost at the Feast of the Sustainable Development Goals
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Obesity: a Ghost at the Feast of the Sustainable Development Goals Tim Lobstein 1,2
&
Katy Cooper 1,3
Accepted: 5 October 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Purpose of Review Despite its rapidly rising global prevalence, obesity is not featured in any of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This review highlights the multiple points at which obesity is affected by the Goals. Recent Findings At least 14 out of the 17 thematic SDG targets play a role in driving the obesity epidemic, including health, food, education, water quality, land and ocean quality, urbanisation and employment. Summary Although the SDGs recognise the need to reduce ‘malnutrition in all its forms’, it underplays the role of urbanisation and unregulated markets on dietary health. Furthermore, adherence to the SDGs may be weak and compromised by conflicted interests. Nonetheless, we have seen how governments can, when pressed, respond to health challenges, and we anticipate how the rise in the numbers of people experiencing excess bodyweight may itself lead to greater demand for collective responsibility to ensure our environments are fully health-creating. Keywords Sustainable development . Malnutrition . Accountability . Stigma
Introduction In 2011, the United Nations General Assembly called on member states to achieve by 2025 a 25% reduction in mortality for NCDs and no increase in the prevalence of adult obesity or diabetes above 2010 levels [1]. In 2015, the Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [2] with a suite of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which we discuss here—including, by 2030, reducing by one-third premature mortality from NCDs and ending ‘all forms of malnutrition’. Extraordinarily, the SDGs do not mention the United Nations 2025 goals, and do not mention obesity, despite its prevalence rising rapidly worldwide.
In 2019 the Assembly adopted a Political Declaration promoting universal health coverage (UHC) for achieving the SDGs [3], to be achieved through available health services and, importantly, through preventive measures to promote and sustain health. This might be the moment to bring obesity into the SDGs—but again there is no mention of obesity in the Declaration. UHC is by no means the only way in which health improvements and obesity reduction can be achieved in the SDGs, and we will discuss this issue in the present paper.
Poor Nutrition and Rising Obesity in Developing Economies This article is part of the Topical Collection on The Obesity Epidemic: Causes and Consequences * Tim Lobstein [email protected] 1
World Obesity Federation, Suite 406, 107-111 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2AB, UK
2
Boden Institute, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia
3
NCD Alliance, London, UK
Despite the extraordinary accomplishments of the modernday food system, a third of the world’s population has some form of malnutrition [4] and without intervention this will rise to half the population by 2025 [5]. Malnutrition not only in
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