The ACT's Chief Health Officer says stopping the spread of obesity requires the government to be involved, with the condition that any intervention must also have community support.
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Dr Paul Kelly, who recently visited New York on a study trip, said the US state's controversial attempts to introduce a Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax and mandated portion control led to a "vigorous" and "healthy" public debate on the government's role in managing obesity.
"There's a whole range of possibilities. I'm not advocating [a sugar tax] but what I'm advocating is the government needs to be part of the solution," he said.
"Just telling people, and asking them to make their own decision, is insufficient."
New York's attempt to introduce a sugar tax and portion control failed, but it successfully introduced a ban on trans fats in 2007 that will be rolled out throughout the United States starting this year.
With about two-thirds of adults and a quarter of children in the ACT overweight or obese– and the numbers "not getting better" – Dr Kelly says the question is at what point and what level the public would find government intervention acceptable.
He says reforms in the area of food regulation are seen as the "most contentious and most prone to accusations of 'nanny state-ism' because food choices are seen to be an individual decision".
The ACT government has indicated a willingness to more closely control the marketing of food in the territory. Last month, for example, the government said it would ban the advertising of junk food, among other things, on ACTION buses.
Meanwhile, public consultation is under way about the marketing of junk food in ACT government venues such as Canberra Stadium, Manuka Oval and Exhibition Park. Selling healthier food at Canberra Raiders and ACT Brumbies football matches, and stopping junk-food companies from sponsoring children's sports teams, were just a few of the possibilities outlined in a recent report.
A tax on products like sugar would have to come from the federal government.
In last month's ACT Population Health Bulletin, Dr Kelly argues that convincing people of the increasingly desperate need to tackle obesity through influencing the food environment – the physical and social surroundings that influence what people eat – is the key to success of any reform.
But he says even the debate flowing from the New York proposals resulted in cultural changes; the easier transition of similar proposals like the sugar tax in the California city of Berkeley; and a drop in the consumption of sugary drinks.
"My view is that we need to be serious about what are the consequences [of obesity]. The consequences are with 63 per cent of the adult population of the ACT overweight or obese – that leads to consequences not only for individuals but for the society," Dr Kelly said.
"We know that the majority of the work we do in the hospital system is related to chronic diseases, many of which, if not caused by, are at least made worse by people being overweight or obese. And that's at a real cost to the whole community."
