Big league - Aussies are fatter than Americans
The average Australian woman is a size 16 and weighs 8kg more than her American counterpart. Australian men are at least 3kg heavier than American males. Sunday Telegraph 21/11/2004

Lose it for your own good!

Fat is not a new issue. For years, doctors and health statisticians have been documenting, and warning of the health and economic dangers from the rise in the number of people who are, to put it bluntly, just too fat. Diet and weight management have been important among certain demographic groups - mainly women - for decades. But the fact that more children are getting fat to the point where their health is at risk seems to have had a galvanising effect on the population.

A recent study notes that this year, 77% of people nominated the rising level of obesity as one of the nation’s biggest challenges. This made it the third-biggest challenge, just behind the growing gap between rich and poor and the rising cost of mortgages. To put it in perspective, obesity was rated as more important than terrorism, unemployment, stress in the workplace, immigration and racism. By Beth Quinlivan; BRW. 30 June 2004

Overweight and obesity are two of the major health hazards of today's world. They are not new and they are not local. In a recent technical report, the World Health Organisation drew attention to the extent of the problem of obesity:

"… obesity is one of today’s most blatantly visible – yet most neglected – public health problems. Paradoxically coexisting with under-nutrition, an escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity – "globesity" – is taking over many parts of the world. If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders.

"Obesity is a complex condition, one with serious social and psychological dimensions, that affects virtually all age and socio-economic groups and threatens to overwhelm both developed and developing countries. In 1995, there were an estimated 200 million obese adults world-wide and another 18 million under-five children classified as overweight. As of 2000, the number of obese adults has increased to over 300 million. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialised societies; in developing countries, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems."