摘要：Although obesity continues to challenge the public’s health, effective policy solutions are wanting. Borrowing from environmental protection efforts, we explored the potential for a “calorie offset” regulatory mechanism, which is similar to the carbon emission offsets used to curb greenhouse gas emissions, to mitigate the harmful health externalities of unhealthy food production. This approach might have a number of advantages over traditional policy tools, and warrants attention from health policymakers and industry alike. Over the past 30 years, the prevalence of obesity has increased 3-fold in many high-income countries. This increase in obesity has partially driven the current chronic disease epidemics, including diabetes mellitus, and cardiac and cerebrovascular disease. In the United States, health demographers have suggested that obesity may underlie a forthcoming decline in life expectancy, the first in more than a century. 1 Although recent reports have suggested a slowing of the rate of obesity, particularly among children, 2 this evidence has been contested. 3 Obesity remains among the most important public health challenges of our time. 2
