Abstract
The public health sector, from WHO to Taiwan, is considering obesity as an important public health problem to be prevented and controlled. In Taiwan, obesity prevention is the main administrative goal of Health Promotion Administration, and it has been regulated by Paragraph 3, Article 28 of Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation, so called “junk food advertisements reguation clause.” Obesity prevention involves interdisciplinary approach, which can include the historical background of liberalization, critique from political philosophy, application of regulation theory, theory and practice in public health, empirical research and critique in medical sociology. However, little legal research has been done on obesity prevention and control. The purpose of this article is to find the theoretical foundations of obesity prevention, and to apply these theoretical foundations to assess the legal strategies, using the junk food advertisements regulation as an example. The issues to be addressed in this article are as follows: Is obesity a global epidemic to be prevented and controlled? Should obesity prevention be regulated by the state? Is the state capable of regulating? How will the state regulate? What are the possible side effects of the regulations, e.g. discrimination? Is the junk food advertisements regulation necessary? What is the constitutional restraint on obesity prevention? The method to carry out this article is using constitutional dogmatic and sociology of law to project the interdisciplinary values on the constitutional values, which are the underlying principles of the Constitution and fundamental rights. The framework consists of the following: the importance of obesity issues, the necessity of improving the obesogenic environment to prevent obesity, the justifiability of obesity regulation by the state, and the necessity of junk food advertisements regulation for improving the obesogenic environment. Finally, this article analyzes the junk food advertisements regulation clause as well as the relating draft regulations, and makes practical suggestions.