Obesity policy in England

Obesity is a physical condition in which a person is very overweight, with a lot of body fat.

Obesity has many causes. An over-simplified description of the most common cause is “eating too much and moving too little”. The same phrase can be expressed more accurately as an imbalance between energy consumed and energy expended.

A person’s likelihood of being overweight or obese is affected by many factors, such as socioeconomic status, age, gender, ethnicity, where they live and whether or not they have a disability or medical condition. Governments have faced a challenge developing policy that is wide enough to address all of these factors.