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Is Obesity a Corporate Responsibility?

How responsible are global food companies when it comes to the growing numbers of their customers that are becoming obese? Also, California's new gold rush.

How responsible are global food companies when it comes to the growing numbers of their customers that are becoming obese? Some say the food companies are moving towards producing healthier products because that's where the money is. Other observers claim that the companies are simply using cleverer marketing in different parts of the world.

We go behind the scenes at a Kellogg's factory, the world's biggest maker of breakfast cereals - some of them, one-third sugar.

"Food deserts" are areas where people have little or no access to healthy foods, often in less wealthy, urban neighbourhoods. For our global look at obesity this week, we've been working with Marketplace, our partner programme in the United States. Marketplace's David Weinberg has been discovering how the health department in California has been trying a fresh approach to tackle food deserts.

We're joined live by David Freedman, a writer with The Atlantic - who tells us why junk food isn't necessarily the enemy in tackling Obesity. Also Dr Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the chairman of the Health and Global Policy Institute in Tokyo why it's (sort of) against the law to be obese in Japan.

Plus, how California's drought has sparked a mini gold rush.

Available now

55 minutes

Last on

Fri 28 Mar 2014 01:06GMT

Broadcast

  • Fri 28 Mar 2014 01:06GMT

Podcast