FOOD manufacturers are likely to follow tobacco companies as the next to be pilloried by the Government as a menace to public health.

The warning comes from The Economist magazine which, in its latest edition, devotes a survey to the food industry investigating the paradox that although food is getting better, diets in the developed world are now promoting the world’s most serious public health problem: obesity. This is the main risk factor for heart disease, which kills more than Aids, wars and malaria, and also for diabetes, which is debilitating, expensive to treat and spreading fast in both rich and poor countries. Obesity further contributes to a range of cancers and other diseases.

The way that food is marketed is blamed for encouraging people to put on weight, because recent studies have shown that bigger portions, a cheap way of seeming to offer a bargain, make people eat more irrespective of appetite.

Cheap convenience food is also blamed. There is a demonstrable direct relationship, The Economist says, between obesity and the relative price of fast food hamburgers. The less burgers cost in relative terms, the fatter people tend to be.

Nonetheless, most recent figures show that Americans got slightly thinner last year on average for the first time.

Governments are worried by the costs of treating diseases resulting from obesity, The Economist says, and food companies are likely to follow tobacco companies in becoming the targets of lawsuits and government regulations.

Though some are already trying to pre-empt such moves, taking the most dangerous fats out of their products, or adding salads and fruit to menus, the magazine predicts that food companies will face more regulatory action, restrictions, bans and punitive taxation.

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