A debate on public radio: nutrition education or environmental change to promote health behaviour?

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joop_Atsma) of the Christian Democratic Party on Dutch public radio. I argued that rules and regulations will be necessary for effective obesity prevention policy in order to change the present ‘obesogenic’ environment into a more ‘obesopreventive’ environment. Mister Atsma claimed that health education is the way to go forward. Our research indicates that a health education approach will be insufficient to change people’s nutrition and physical activity behaviours for obesity prevention. Environmental changes are needed to better facilitate healthful nutrition and physical activity behaviours, and to make un-healthful choices less available and accessible. This is also what has been advocated by WHO Europe in their policy to curb the obesity epidemic (see http://www.euro.who.int/obesity/conference2006). Please visit http://omroep.vara.nl/De_VARA_op_Radio_1.2681.0.html and link to ‘Radio Kassa 26 Februari to listen to the radio debate.