CHICAGO - With two-thirds of all adults in the U.S. classified as obese or overweight, public health officials warn that much of the population is at dangerously high risk of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic and costly illnesses, reports the Chicago Tribune. The question, however, is: Who??s responsible for slimming down the nation?

The newspaper writes that several recent obesity action plans, including one specific to Illinois, suggest that the government can slim American waistlines through "a battery of public policy measures ranging from soda taxes, better school lunches and mandatory school gym to calorie listings on menus, fitness-friendly infrastructure and restrictions on 'junk food?? advertising."

The theory is that if taxes and laws can get Americans to wear a seat belt while driving or stop smoking through higher taxes and regulations, then the government can also get folks to eat healthier and lose weight.

Meanwhile, "a growing chorus of critics" feels strongly that the government has no business entering the weight-loss arena.

"It's the individual's responsibility," Steve Siebold, author of Die Fat or Get Tough, told the newspaper, adding, "For the majority of us, we need to stop putting the pizza in our mouth and it's not the government that's going to get us to do that. It's about making a personal decision to make it happen, not letting the nanny state take care of us."

Advocates of anti-obesity policies, however, say the government should be responsible for the country??s obesity issue ?" especially when taxpayers are left footing the bill for obesity-related health-care costs.

In Illinois alone, obesity results in $3.4 billion a year in additional medical costs and could hit $15 billion by 2018 if trends continue, Elissa Bassler, chief executive of the Illinois Public Health Institute, told the newspaper.

"So if you are not even concerned about health and care only about economics you can still see how this affects the bottom line for employers, the business community and policymakers," she commented, adding, "The cost to their pocketbook is just overwhelming."

According to Obesity Myth author Paul Campos, population-wide weight reduction programs are largely ineffective. He bases his "pessimism" on long-term health interventions by Johns Hopkins University and the University of Minnesota that resulted in improved health behaviors but no weight loss.

"We don't know how to make fat people thin or how to keep thin people from getting fat on a population-wide basis," Campos told the newspaper, adding, "This is considered a heretical and anathematizing thing to say in these public policy debates, but it's a critical detail that tends to be ignored by policymakers. They are recommending interventions that have been tested repeatedly and don't work."

Anti-obesity policy supporters also note that some of the newer strategies have not yet been tried, including menu-labeling requirements that will go into effect nationally in 2012, as well as new voluntary guidelines on advertising "junk food" to children.

There is also the issue of so-called "food deserts" where communities lack access to fresh produce within a mile of their home. However, simply making fresh foods available won??t necessarily translate to healthier eating habits.

"Just making these foods available doesn't mean that people are going to buy them or eat them," Ruth Kava, a senior fellow at American Council on Science and Health, told the newspaper, adding, "Many people are not going to know what to do with them because their family has never used that kind of food. In my mind it boils down to appropriate education."