Obesity

In last recent years UK government discovered a very big problem in society - OBESITY

Obesity is a high accumulation of fat in  people's body. We can measure obesity by Body Mass Index (BMI). It is calculated as your weight (in kg) divided by your height (in metres) squared. People of average weight have BMI between 18 and 25 and people with overweight have BMI over 30. This group of people is considered obese.  

Here is some facts about obesity in the UK

- 70% of men and 63% of women are overweight or obese

- Obesity accounts for 30000 deaths a year

- Obesity is estimated to cost the British economy over 2 bn of pounds every year

- One in five children in Britain eats no fruit at all

Lets talk about cause of obesity. From some estimation the main causes of obesity are:

1) Changing lifestyle - for example people are likely to eat fast food today, because they have a daily work, so their spare time is very limited, therefore most people are not able to cook and they have to "have a snack" every day, which can cause an obesity.

2) The falling real cost of processed foods because of economies of scale. Big food companies such as Mcdonalds are growing very fast, so prices for their food are falling (economies of scale - getting bigger - minimizing cost of production of each unit). This is (low prices) ,of course, very attractive for people, so most of them are starting to consume cheap fast food.

3) Calories.  There has been an increase in calorific consumption per day and decline in every day exercises taken. 

4) A rise in relative poverty. Lower income consumers prefer cheap food. As I sad before prices for fast food are falling (because of economies of scale, for example), so poverty would buy fast food more than expensive healthy food. 

5) Bigger portions.

In conclusion I would like to say that government has to fight with obesity. It can be done by subsidizing healthy food production, also by providing information campaign about harm of consuming fast food. Probably providing taxation on producers obese food could  be useful to stop obesity rising. All these actions are part of government intervention, that government has to do to solve market failure (obesity is one of examples of market failure).