"All you need is shoes"

Yasuchika Hasegawa, the CEO of drugmaker Takeda, which has interests in medicines for both diabetes and obesity, said such interventions were needed, given the deep-seated nature of the appetite for sweet and fatty foods.

"It's a fundamental problem. To fix the problem you have to change behaviour, but changing behaviour is the most difficult thing to do," he said.

Perhaps inspired by the fact that all but the very top VIPs have to trudge through snow to reach the WEF conference centre, the most popular prescription is to promote physical activity through simple measures like building more sidewalks.

"It is hard to get people to eat healthier, but we can get people to walk. All they need is shoes," said George Halvorson, head of U.S. healthcare firm Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, who spends at least 30 minutes a day on his treadmill.

Nike, another company with a clear agenda on the issue, recently commissioned a study estimating that 9 percent of all premature deaths worldwide are due to inactivity.

But Eva Jane-Llopis, WEF chronic disease expert, said government intervention - like the soda taxes so vehemently opposed by the soft drinks industry - are still needed.

"Everybody likes physical activity because it is not contentious, but it is not a silver bullet," she said.

"We need regulation to level the playing field. Everyone is going to have to do much more if we want to turn the tide, especially in middle-income countries."