We have a public health problem of overweight and obesity, but it's been blown out of proportion, ... We focus on obesity and not on other health habits and other risk factors.

There is a misdirected obsession with weight and weight loss, the focus is all wrong. It's fitness that is the key.

With an epidemic of obesity and associated type 2 diabetes round the corner, there is a greater need to focus on the management of chronic conditions including heart and circulatory disease.

In any case, seeing care for certain groups as an excessive cost reflects an arguably perverse way of thinking about health care in terms of human need. [...] In other words, care for the sick is an economic burden only in health care systems where profit is the bottom line and public services are underfunded and politically unsupported - that is, systems in which only market logic is considered legitimate.

There's so much focus now on obesity, but a lot of parents just don't see the harm in one cupcake. They don't see the magnitude of how much kids are really getting.

The continuing epidemic of obesity is a critical public health concern. As a nation, we need to respond as vigorously to this epidemic as we do to an infectious disease epidemic.