11. The Prevention and Treatment of Obesity

The cause of obesity is multidisciplinary so that to reduce obesity requires multidisciplinary solutions. Government intervention may be required to prevent the increase of obesity; for example, the marketing of unhealthy products could be legally constrained. A population which is obese will incur higher costs of healthcare than a leaner population. The costs of obesity and its associated diseases can be largely prevented, although prevention is more difficult in the case when obesity is the consequence of a predetermined genetic disorder, which however only affects a relatively small proportion of obesity-related cases. Prevention is often undertaken to prevent an increase in obesity rather than to prevent obesity from occurring. Generally, people begin to think about reducing obesity once it has already occurred.