Fast-food companies should be asked by European health ministers to put healthier food on their menus, according to the US Health Secretary, Mr Tommie Thompson.
He said this step, combined with educating parents on proper food choices for themselves and their children, as well as encouraging them to get their children to exercise more, would be important in combating the global epidemic which obesity has become.
"We have to put pressure on the fast-food industry, as well as the food companies. I think its very important for us to call them in and say it's about time that you put healthier foods on your menus," he said.
Mr Thompson, who was a guest at an informal meeting of EU health ministers, including those from the new accession states, in Cork yesterday, said no one step would solve the obesity epidemic.
"There is no silver bullet. It's going to require short steps," he said.
Obesity, he added, was on the verge of overtaking tobacco as the leading preventable cause of death in America. "America's poor eating habits and lack of physical activity are literally killing us," he said.
Two out of every three American adults are overweight or obese, he said, adding that the number of overweight children there has tripled in the past two decades. Obesity costs the US economy about $117 billion a year.
Mr Thompson said people with healthy lifestyles should get "credits" from their health insurance company.
Ireland's EU Commissioner Mr David Byrne said two-thirds of Europeans would be overweight or obese by 2030.
"The full economic cost of cardiovascular disease will be between €70 and €135 billion per year in the European Union," he said.
On the way to the meeting in Cork, Mr Thompson said that he had signed the UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control on behalf of the US and he congratulated the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, on the smoking ban in the Republic.
Meanwhile the EU ministers discussed a range of other issues, including alcohol abuse among EU citizens, an e-health action plan and patient mobility between members-states.
Mr Byrne said citizens were entitled to seek treatment in another member-state if there was an undue delay in accessing the care they needed in their own country.