The worldwide burgeoning of obesity and diabetes, including in developing nations, is causing increasing alarm. This week, the United Nations is bringing attention to these and other noncommunicable diseases at the General Assembly meeting in New York on the prevention of noncommunicable diseases.

But global funding shortfalls, the reality that obesity and diabetes affect the rich and middle class more than other socioeconomic groups and the absence of a proactive civil society will create few incentives for politicians in developing nations to take U.N. resolutions seriously.

U.N. unlikely to sway poorer nations on obesity, diabetes – CNN.com

A study shows that ‘obesity’ is the main reason why children in grade-school years have the tendency to isolate themselves. The researchers monitored more than 3,300 Australian children for 4 years starting from preschool. Measurements we’re taken particularly the weight and height of the kids. Information we’re obtained from primary caregivers. Questionnaires regarding the children’s mental health problems and quality of life we’re given to parents and teachers and asked them to answer every question.

Obesity: Main Cause of Social Isolation of Kids

Moving beyond dressing up as a giant tomato and filling school buses with sand, Jamie Oliver has kicked his campaign to save the world up a notch with a letter asking United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to take up the topic of childhood obesity with the global body at a high-level meeting this week. And, as any good celebrity advocacy letter to an international organization would, Oliver’s is filled with statistical citations, emotional appeal and self-referentiality.

So why should UN delegates care what a celebrity chef thinks? Oliver has the answer: “You may not know me, but I have spent many years now working in schools and communities and talking to governments in the US, Britain and Australia, campaigning against the epidemic of obesity which is threatening the lives of our children and has a good chance of bringing our economies to a standstill through bad health within twenty years.”

Jamie Oliver Lectures the United Nations on Obesity Crisis – Jamie Oliver Saves The World – Eater National