At an annual meeting held in Boston, Professor Philip James of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that the obesity problem was in need of a global commitment, and that international collaboration was needed to fight off the threat.
James pushed for stricter health rules, as well as increased action to providing people with healthy food. Marketing rules and observations for food products also needed to observe health concerns, said James.
"Blaming individuals for their personal vulnerability to weight gain is no longer acceptable in a world were the majority is already overweight and obesity is rising everywhere," James told the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The BBC reported that James proposed a "traffic lights" food-labeling scheme, aimed at giving consumers easier and more visible access to a product's sugar, fat, and salt content.
"This is a form of public education which is being resisted mightily in Brussels with intense lobbying of commissioners who've just announced that they won't go down the British road," said James.
Professor Rena Wing, another attendee at the AAAS conference, pointed out that the battle against obesity was harder than people might think.
"The obesity epidemic won't go away simply because people switch from whole to skimmed milk," she said, as quoted by the Telegraph.
"They need to substantially cut their calories and boost physical activity to get to a health weight, and keep watching the scales once they do," Wing added.
More attention was being called towards child obesity, as according to the experts, it leads to other consequences, such as impaired academic performance, diminished learning power, and lower life expectancy.
