Abstract
Ethical reflections help us decide what are the best actions to pursue in difficult and controversial situations. Reflections on public policy consider how to alter patterns of individual activity and institutional policies or frameworks for the better. The rising prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity may pose serious health issues. As such, it is related to ethical and public policy questions including responsibility for health, food production and consumption, patterns of physical activity, the role of the state, and the rights and duties of parenthood.
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Notes
- 1.
There is much scope for simplification on both sides of this equation. On the one hand, food eaten does not simply correspond to energy uptake by the body. (For example, the calorie value of foodstuffs corresponds to the energy uptake expected in a normal digestive tract. But this will clearly differ between individuals and in the same individual over time.) On the other, energy expenditure is not directly proportionate to the amount of “exercise” that a person undertakes. Even an intervention that is simply aimed at reducing BMI – as we argue above, not a goal that we think is helpful for policy purposes – might therefore intervene at numerous points that have no obvious relation to calorie intake or amount of physical activity. For some indication of the range of such factors, including the impact of ambient temperature control, pollution, smoking, medications and amount of sleep, see Keith et al. (2006).
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Wickins-Drazilova, D., Williams, G. (2011). Ethics and Public Policy. In: Moreno, L., Pigeot, I., Ahrens, W. (eds) Epidemiology of Obesity in Children and Adolescents. Springer Series on Epidemiology and Public Health, vol 2. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6039-9_2
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