Introduction

Overweight and obesity are according to the WHO a major threat for health in our century. Worldwide. Therefore many EU and non-EU countries have implemented or are considering interventions aimed at preventing overweight and obesity by influencing the lifestyle of citizens. Such interventions are not morally neutral. They may cut deep in the individual persons life because they involve essential cultural views and values regarding food and eating, appearance and image, the impact of biological or socio-cultural technologies and freedom.

This project analyses the ethics of interventions aimed at lifestyle changes to prevent and/or treat overweight and obesity. Interventions have to be effective and ethically justified. How are they to be evaluated in the light of fundamental ethical principles such as autonomy, privacy, justice, individual and cultural identity, and societal interference? Ethical justification does not take place in a moral vacuum. One needs to understand the moral and cultural climate in which interventions are proposed, including cultural similarities and differences. The ethical issues have to be analysed in the light of cultural norms and values regarding the image of obesity and overweight, food and eating, physical exercise, and individual lifestyle. What does it mean for a person in a certain society to be overweight? What is the image of obesity and overweight? What are the similarities and differences between the image of women and men? What does it mean to fundamentally change one’s lifestyle? Without deeper understanding of those notions, interventions cannot be ethically evaluated.

These issues form the structure of this project: its ultimate goal is to provide an ethical framework for the evaluation of interventions aiming at the prevention of overweight and obesity. Such a framework must rest on sound foundations. Therefore cultural values, norms, traditions regarding the image of obesity, the culture of eating, and the present and future biological and socio-cultural technologies will be analysed in the light of ethical notions.

These issues can only be analysed through a multidisciplinary approach and intercultural comparisons. The project will be carried out by a multidisciplinary consortium of partners, with experts in philosophy and ethics, medicine, public health, physical exercise, and medical sociology. The consortium has a participant from a developing country to widen the cultural perspective.

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