Summary
In 1997 obesity was first recognised as a global problem when the World Health Organisation first agreed to discuss the issue. Researchers had discovered startling information about an increase in the number of overweight people in the developing world. The consultation was led by a group calling itself the International Obesity Task Force which was led by Professor Philip James. He's been telling Claire Bowes how he had to persuade the WHO that areas of the world struggling with malnutrition were now also suffering from obesity.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Witness Podcast with Me Claire Bowes history as told by the people who were there. |
| 0:07.0 | Today we're looking at fat and specifically at how the World Health Organization first realized that the problem of obesity |
| 0:15.4 | was affecting all the countries of the world, not just the rich ones. |
| 0:19.4 | The WHO held its first ever consultation on the problem 20 years ago, and I've been speaking to |
| 0:25.7 | the man who convinced them to take the issue seriously. Now it's a radio tradition that when |
| 0:31.0 | a guest sits in front of a microphone in order to make sure |
| 0:34.3 | that they're not too quiet or too loud we ask them what they had for breakfast. |
| 0:38.7 | It's a question Professor Philip James gets asked a lot. I'm so used to being asked that probably about a thousand times. |
| 0:46.8 | Actually I'm very boring because I have a very small glass of orange juice |
| 0:52.4 | together with a mooseley that my wife makes up and that's my very boring breakfast. |
| 0:59.0 | Boring perhaps, but it stops him tipping the scales, says and he should know as he spent decades |
| 1:05.7 | finding out how and why people get fat in fact in 1979 he helped the BBC make a |
| 1:12.3 | series on food and health. |
| 1:15.0 | Well now, Dr James, you've got a list of everything they've eaten for the whole week. |
| 1:19.0 | Could you give us your reactions? |
| 1:21.0 | Well, I think it's fair to say that the sort of diet that you're having is very typical for |
| 1:25.9 | what many people are eating in Britain, and I don't think that one should regard this as |
| 1:30.9 | peculiar. |
| 1:31.9 | Not peculiar, but not healthy either. At the time he estimated that |
| 1:36.0 | half the population of Britain was overweight and this was a typical British |
| 1:41.2 | diet. If we just go through your particular diet, Mr Moore, |
| 1:45.5 | here's the toast with the cream cheese. |
... |
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