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Experts At Obesity Conference Warn Of Deadly Global Pandemic

Experts at an international conference about obesity say governments should impose bans on junk food advertising aimed directly at children. Doctor Claude Bouchard is head of the Pennington Research Center at L-S-U, and president of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, an umbrella group for medical organizations dealing with weight-related and children's health issues. He says the group supports advertising bans as official policy. But he says that's unlikely to have any immediate effect on influencing governments to introduce such bans. Or, as Doctor Boyd Swinburn, a member of the International Obesity Task Force, puts it, "There is going to be a political bun fight over this for some time." Mississippi ranks at the top among U-S- states in obesity ratings, in the top five, along with Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky. A report by Trust for America's Health, compiled last year, found Mississippi leads the way with 29.5 percent of adults considered to be obese.