Obesity: introduction

Obesity is a major cause of disease and death in the population of Scotland. It has a part to play in the development of a range of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancers of the colon, ovary and breast, gall bladder disease, female infertility, osteoarthritis, stroke, and dementia.

In 2007, the UK Government Office for Science published the Foresight Tackling Obesities Report. This represents the most comprehensive summary of the evidence of the causes of obesity in the UK population and demonstrates that there are many behavioural and societal factors that combine into a " complex web of societal and biological factors that have, in recent decades, exposed our inherent human vulnerability to weight gain".

It was estimated that in 2001 the cost to the NHS of the treatment of obesity and obesity-related diseases was £171 million (Walker, 2003). This refers to the costs of treatment only, so excludes non-treatment costs, and wider social costs. More recently, the Scottish Government has estimated that the total cost to Scottish society of obesity in 2007/8 was in excess of £457 million and it is likely that this is an underestimate (Scottish Government 2010)