Like a portent of disease, the London Eye casts its red-rimmed gaze across the River Thames towards the House of Commons.
Fixing the multitude with its Cyclopean stare, it stands as a monument to the madness of an unfettered economy which takes no account of its impact on the public’s health.
The Eye has a new sponsor in Coca-Cola, whose principal product contains nine teaspoons of sugar per can. Sugar is one commodity of which the world is not short. Indeed its excess is killing us, slowly but steadily, in our millions.
Coca-Cola sells 1.7bn drinks around the world each day and, as a leading fizzy drink manufacturer, is a major contributor to the global epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Allowing the company to sponsor an iconic London landmark should make us weep.
The rise in obesity and the diabetes that it causes is one of the greatest health catastrophes the world has seen. As girths have expanded, rates of diabetes have soared with 246 million people now affected by the condition. On current trends, one in 10 of the world’s population will suffer from diabetes in 20 years’ time.
Only last week Diabetes UK warned that the disease was the fastest growing health threat of our times The NHS spends a tenth of its budget on diabetes and prevalence rates among children, key consumers of fizzy drinks in whom type 2 diabetes associated with obesity used to be rare, have soared.
Worldwide, the cost of caring for people with diabetes is estimated at $612bn (£400bn), greater than the entire GDP of Sweden. In a report this week the World Health Organisation said 16 million people were dying each year as a result of poor lifestyles and WHO director-general, Margaret Chan, called for restrictions on advertising and health taxes on sugar, salt and fat to reduce the toll.
As diabetes comes on slowly it often causes complications before it is diagnosed and then leads to heart disease, stroke, amputations, kidney disease, blindness and premature death. Lifelong intervention is needed including both medical and, crucially, political support.
We know what we must do. The question is how to do it. There are measures that do work against obesity and the diabetes that it causes. There may be no magic bullet – a miracle pill that will make us all thin no matter how much we eat – but we can help people to achieve a healthy weight. In isolation each individual measure may have limited impact but taken together they add up to a strategy that could transform health and avert a global crisis.
A report by an expert group to be presented at the World Innovation Summit for Health (Wish) in Doha next month, which I chair, will set out the key measures required to protect individuals from the ravages of diabetes and save nations from the rocketing care burden. There is now a clear consensus on how to combat the disease through behaviour change, screening, self-management and drug treatment.
Obesity and diabetes are not dramatic conditions like cancer and heart disease and their health and economic consequences are often underestimated. As a result they lack the public and political priority they deserve. Critically, we need to create an environment that encourages healthy living with a variety of interventions ranging from soft nudges to tough legislation.
Last year, for example, Mexico introduced a sugar tax of one peso per litre of fizzy drink. In the first three months of 2014 there was a 10% fall in consumption of sugary drinks and a 7% rise in other beverages, such as bottled water.
In 2011 Hungary imposed a tax on products containing high amounts of salt or sugar (as well as those with high caffeine levels). The average price of the products rose 27% and within a year consumption had fallen by up to 15%.
Tax breaks and similar financial incentives have been offered in Canada and South Africa to encourage physical activity and a ban on including toys with children’s meals in fast food outlets has been implemented in Chile.
Calorie labelling is now mandated in US restaurant chains with at least 20 outlets. A similar scheme introduced in New South Wales led to a 15% fall in the calories purchased in each transaction.
These examples, taken from the Wish report, demonstrate what can be done if the political will is there. But in London we have chosen instead to hand over the single biggest advertising hoarding in the city to one of the principal drivers of an epidemic that threatens to engulf us and overwhelm the NHS.
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