The fight against obesity is on. After years of dillydallying, health authorities are finally taking the plunge. Binning the weird posters and uninspiring campaigns which never caught the public’s imagination, they will get dirty and grapple with the problem at root level.

It is high time too! More than four out of every ten Mauritians are overweight. Every month, horrified doctors are referring dozens of obese children to hospitals. The problem did not appear overnight. It is a result of carelessness at all levels. However, when the over-expanding girths are taking over the streets,it is no longer time for recrimination but for concrete action.

Faced with such a crisis, the state has two main options: act on demand and supply of fatty foods. For years, the ministry of Health has done its best to educate the nation. The irritating poster campaigns were always doomed to fail but the dieticians have tried hard to inculcate a diet change.

Diet is a very personal matter. Asking someone to eat less of this or that will inevitably raise eyebrows. Mauritians have an aversion to being told what to eat. They love their mountains of rice and their junk food with unmentionable oil, salt and sugar levels. At the end of the day, we are what we eat. The culture is slowly changing but most people still don’t know what a balanced diet is. Worse, some ignore it on purpose.

It is clear that education hasn’t worked. The sales of fatty foods are reaching record levels. Mauritians seem to thrive on the risk of becoming obese, diabetic, hypertensive or getting a coronary attack. So it’s on to plan B: an attack on the supply side.

The first sign has been a ban on all snacks containing more than 10% of saturated fats. On average, each one of us consumes about a pound of these salty and oily little things every month. A very scary thought indeed. The businesses that made a fortune out of this lucrative trade are crying out loud. But no one in his right mind would die for their cause.

More bans are to come but, in the meantime, the State should really focus on one measure, which would control both the demand and supply sides: labelling. Most foods sold in this country haven’t got a nutritional fact sheet. While some additives are cleverly disguised as chemical designations in the ingredients, the energy, fat, carbohydrate and sodium levels are usually absent from the labels. Local products are even worse. As the country slips down a gear on the economic front, people will turn towards cheaper alternatives. Now, more than ever before, we don’t know what we are eating. Education is futile without proper labelling.

The health conscious, a very rare breed indeed, hits a brick wall: the prices of healthy food. Dieting certainly doesn’t rhyme with being miserable. It’s all about eating properly. And yet, ‘light’ food is so expensive it seems to push us back to fatty shelves. A fat tax could be levied on junk food to make it more expensive.

This is also the question of demand and supply… and education. Sales of sugarfree drinks are soaring and, at the right prices too. Government needs a multi-pronged approach to tackle the issue. Alarm bells are ringing. It is no more just a health issue but an economic one too. Treating patients is costly. New measures have to be found and… fast. Other countries are taking radical steps such as banning fatty foods from school while introducing balanced diets in canteens. Obesity is indeed food for thought. The chunky nation needs to react.