The world watches in horror as stories of increasing obesity in the US hit headlines; how it’s affecting their children, documentaries about fast food for school lunches and gigantic portion sizes, yet we fail to look a little closer to home sometimes.
Australia isn’t too far behind America these days, with the National Health Survey 2014-2015 reporting that 63% of Australian adults are now overweight or obese (Australian Bureau of Statistics). This is a worrying statistic given the serious health implications of being overweight let alone obese or morbidly obese. What is even more worrying is that the survey also reported that a quarter of children in Australia are also overweight or obese!
Australian’s Expanding Waistlines
The ABS also report that there is a significantly higher percentage of men that are overweight/obese (71%) in comparison to women (56%); either way it is a worrying statistic. There are several arguments for the increase in obesity, not just in Australia but globally, for example groups are asking for the companies that produce the food to take more responsibility for the labelling of foods, others blame advertising, and then of course there is putting the responsibility back onto the individual (but surely children can’t be held responsible for their weight problems?).
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