LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to the the Institute of Medicine, America's obesity epidemic is deeply rooted in the current landscape. The solution is a complex one, which will require the overhauling of farm policies and zoning laws to introducing a soda tax to fix it.

The institute refutes the idea that obesity is largely the result of a lack of discipline on the part of individuals. Instead, the institute embraces policy proposals that have met resistance from the food industry and lawmakers, arguing that multiple strategies will be needed to make the U.S. environment less "obesogenic."

The report was released at the Weight of the Nation conference, a three-day meeting hosted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"People have heard the advice to eat less and move more for years, and during that time a large number of Americans have become obese," IOM committee member Shiriki Kumanyika told journalists. "That advice will never be out of date. But when you see the increase in obesity you ask, what changed? And the answer is, the environment. The average person cannot maintain a healthy weight in this obesity-promoting environment."

The Center for Consumer Freedom, funded by restaurant, food and other industries, condemned the institute as joining forces with the nation's "food nannies." The Center said the agency's recommendations would "actively reduce the number of choices Americans have when they sit down to eat" and emphasized that "personal responsibility" alone was to blame for the obesity epidemic.

Officials are attempting to address the societal factors that led the percentage of obese adults to more than double since 1980, when 15 percent were in that category. Among children, it has soared to 17 percent from 5 percent in the past 30 years.

Obesity is responsible for an additional $190 billion a year in healthcare costs, or one-fifth of all healthcare spending. Billions more come in the form of higher health insurance premiums, lost productivity and absenteeism.

"There has been a tendency to look for a single solution, like putting a big tax on soda or banning marketing (of unhealthy food) to children," panel chairman Dan Glickman, a senior fellow of the Bipartisan Policy Center says. "What this report says is this is not a one-solution problem."

The panel identifies taxing sugar-sweetened beverages as a "potential action," noting that "their link to obesity is stronger than that observed for any other food or beverage."

Predictably, this has been met with opposition. "I do not think in any way, shape or form that such punitive measures will change behaviors," said Rhona Applebaum, Coca-Cola Co.'s chief scientific and regulatory officer, in advance of the report. Anyone deterred by the tax from buying sweetened soda, she said, will replace those calories with something else.

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