Weight Loss Blog

Drunks swimming in gin, smokers in body bags and dopers living with their parents deep into adulthood. Those are among the public service ads shown in the past. But the government’s new batch of obesity spots declines even to show a fat person, let alone wag a finger for gluttony or sloth.

No one is advocating public service announcements that ridicule fat people; experts say such spots would do more harm than good. But critics complain that the three new spots premiering this month are a wimpy attack on the costly and deadly explosion of obesity in America.

“It’s so namby-pamby I think people will shrug it off,” said Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocacy organization.

The three new spots are the latest in a series created by the Ad Council and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which try to tackle the nation’s obesity problem with ads that encourage healthy snacking and taking the stairs.

Creators of the “Small Steps” campaign, funded by the government at more than $1.5 million a year, cite survey data for 467 adults which showed those who saw the ads did more walking and adopted some other healthy habits than those who didn’t see the ads.

But critics say such a survey is hardly proof of success, and the nation’s fat problem is clearly getting worse — more than one in three U.S. children are overweight or obese, and two in three adults are.

“I think ‘Small Steps’ is a euphemism for small vision,” said Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Center for Eating and Weight Disorders.

The “Small Steps” campaign began in 2004. It was created for free by McCann Erickson New York, the ad agency that created the MasterCard “Priceless” campaign. Six TV spots have aired so far, all professionally produced and humorous, highlighting tips to healthier living.

This month, three more spots joined the rotation, along with a multimedia campaign focusing on exercise. The new anti-obesity TV spots show trim or slightly pudgy people noticing blobs of fat on a hotel room floor or in a theater. They comment that someone must have lost it by eating healthy snacks.

The spots’ creators say they learned in focus groups that many people are intimidated — hopeless, even — about the sustained changes needed to slim down.

“So many people, when they think about losing weight, see it as a Sisyphean task — ‘I have to lose weight but I can’t fit it into my busy schedule,’” said Peggy Conlon, president of the Ad Council.

The ads offer easily achievable tips that empower people to make positive changes, she added.

The ads targeting smoking aren’t as tame. A recent one by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows smokers’ decayed and tumored bodies.

Young viewers pay more attention to ads that evoke feelings of personal loss, sadness, anger, disgust or fear, according to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kids also tend to remember such ads longer.

That drama is lacking in the obesity spots — for example, none have offered a surgeon’s view of fat, or dramatized a death from Type 2 diabetes, or shown a person complaining about how a fat neighbor’s medical bills are costing taxpayers.

In the past, the vegan advocacy group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, has taken a somewhat confrontational approach.

In 2005, the group put out a spot in which doctors yank a pizza and jumbo-sized soda away from an intently eating fat boy and toss him an apple. They put out another in which the same doctors haul away fatty foods from a restaurant called Chubby’s.

The group has no data on whether the ads are working, but the government ads “don’t address the obesity problem in a vivid enough way to get people’s attention,” said Patrick Sullivan, the group’s communications director.

That raises a second complaint with the government’s campaign: It sidesteps what some feel are the real causes of the obesity epidemic, the abundance of cheap and large portions of sugary and high-calorie foods.

“The U.S. government doesn’t have the guts to go after junk food producers,” Jacobson said.

Tied in with the “Small Steps” campaign, the Ad Council and federal health department are part of the “Coalition for Healthy Children,” whose members include Coca Cola, PepsiCo, the Hershey Co. and the National Confectioners Association. Critics say the partnership suggests a conflict of interest that might dissuade efforts to discourage soft drinks or candy bars.

Food and soda companies did not alter what was said in spots, said Ellyn Fisher, an Ad Council spokeswoman. The content was shaped by advertising research, which concluded the spots were humorous and motivating, she said.

Small Steps campaing

The Small Steps Campaign is a multi-media campaign to fight obesity with ads in print, on television, and online (specifically ads for TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, out of home, i.e. bus and subway, and web banners, all in both English and Spanish). The idea is that people can lose large amounts of weight permanently by taking small steps towards healthier living.

The simple truth is that Americans are getting fatter at an alarming rate, and that’s not good for anyone, whether you’re looking at it from a personal health standpoint, or at the economic impact of the costs of preventable diseases due to obesity. This is a VERY serious problem for our country and, more increasingly, the world.

This campaign attempted to target overweight people as they are most at risk of becoming obese, but the team felt that they are still likely to feel that they can affect their weight positively.

Families were also targeted, as the group hoped that they could influence the largest number of people, long-term, by marketing towards families with children.

In their own words:

It’s hard to stay in shape these days. Our entire lives are built around driving cars, eating on the run, and spending our free time relaxing in front of the TV or computer. We live in neighborhoods without sidewalks; we are surrounded by high calorie and high fat foods; we drive more than we walk or ride bikes.

All of these factors may contribute to the fact that two out of every three Americans are now overweight or obese — defined as having a body mass index over 25 — and that number is rising. While this problem is widely recognized as a public health crisis, we don’t have nearly enough information about realistic ways that regular people can actually change their lives and bodies. For many of us, a vigorous workout regimen or restrictive diet is just not possible.

At the same time, we want to be healthy not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren. And we all know that if we don’t follow established healthy eating patterns, and continue to decrease our activity levels, we might not be able to do that.

Overweight Now a Global Problem

Worldwide, 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women are now overweight, and 24 percent of men and 27 percent of women are obese, say researchers who looked at data from 63 countries.

The study included information on more than 168,000 men and women ages 18-80 (average age 48), living on five continents. All of them were evaluated by their family doctors.

The findings are published in this week’s issue of the journal Circulation.

“The study results show that excess body weight is pandemic, with one-half to two-thirds of the overall study population being overweight or obese,” lead author Beverley Balkau, director of research at INSERM in France, said in a prepared statement. INSERM is the French equivalent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

She noted that obesity has become a major clinical and public health problem in many countries.

The data collected from the International Day for Evaluation of Abdominal Obesity also found that 56 percent of men and 71 percent of women had abdominal adiposity (excess fat), which significantly increases the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes.

In this study, abdominal adiposity was determined by measuring waist circumference.

“For men, each increase (in waist circumference) of approximately 5.5 inches (14 centimeters) means an increased frequency of about 35 percent for heart disease and for women an increase of approximately six inches (15 centimeters) equates to a 40 percent increase for heart disease. Even in people who are lean, an increasing waist circumference means increasing risk for heart disease and diabetes,” Balkau said.

Rates of obesity — a body mass index of 30 or more — varied between regions, ranging from a low of 7 percent in men and women in South and East Asia to 36 percent in Canadian men and women, the study found.

Other findings from the study:

• Overall frequency of heart disease was 16 percent in men and 13 percent in women.
• Eastern Europe had high rates of heart disease (27 percent in men, 24 percent in women), while Canada had low rates (16 percent in men, 8 percent in women).
• Overall, 13 percent of men and 11 percent of women had diabetes.

Governments need to take more preventive measures — such as encouraging people to exercise and providing more access to physical activity — in order to halt rising rates of overweight and obesity, Balkau said.

“Physical activity and good nutrition are key. A change is needed or the public health situation for heart disease and diabetes will become worse,” she warned.

Armchair fans star in obesity ad

The European Commission and Uefa have teamed up to launch an anti-obesity TV campaign - featuring a group of armchair-ridden couch potatoes struggling to play football - that will run during this year’s Champions League coverage.

The 30-second ad, “Go on, get out of your armchair”, is scheduled to run 2,023 times during the half-time breaks in each match over the course of the September to May competition.

“Tackling rising levels of obesity across Europe is a major public health priority for the European Commission,” said Philip Tod, spokesman for health at the EC.

“This advert will spearhead the Get Active Campaign and hopefully bring the issue front of mind.”

The advert, which aims to encourage people of all ages to get out and play sport, is expected to reach between 80 million and 100 million viewers during each match week of the Champions League.

The TV campaign, created by advertising agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, will break across 48 European markets when the competition kicks-off on September 18.

The ad, in which the armchair-bound fans attempt to play football against a backdrop of La Donna e Mobile from Verdi’s Rigoletto, is being run free of charge through a deal with the Union of European Football Associations, which retains the right to use 30 seconds of airtime in matches for “social initiatives”.

The 30-second advert cost €550,000 (?372,000) to make. AMV BBDO provided its services free of charge.

Child obesity is of particular concern in Europe. According to the International Obesity Task Force an estimated 3 million children in Europe are obese, a figure that climbs by 85,000 each year.

Up to 27% of European men and 38% of women are considered to be obese, according to the European Commission.