Obesity

“We wanna see the pig in action!!”

This is but one of the many comments that appeared on the UK Telegraph’s website after it posted a story about Donna Simpson, a 42 year-old mother of two from New Jersey who wants to be the world’s fattest woman.

To do this, she’ll have to double her weight to hit the 1,000lb mark (roughly 454kg), giving her the dubious honour of weighing more than any other woman on the planet: about 6.8 times the weight of the average woman in Australia.

Continue reading "Woman who wants to be world’s fattest reveals more" »

Think you’re a normal weight? So did I, until I got stuck in lift at 2am.

A big group of us piled in and it promptly broke.

After the shock of screaming to a halt between floors, we were indignant. The lift said it could hold 12 people. There were only 11 of us.

Continue reading "Fat tax useless if overweight is the new average" »

If the legislation for the Orwellian­-sounding Australian National Preventive Health Agency passes, then expect an avalanche of make­-work exercises by the Agency all for the cause of making us healthier.

Armed with a budget of $133 million of your money over four years, the agency would get to work advising commonwealth and state health ministers about health issues surrounding alcohol and tobacco consumption and obesity.

It will look to create new policies about interventions in settings such as schools, workplaces and communities.

Continue reading "The perils of a fat tax" »

Hi.  My name is Ashlee.  I’m a 24 year old Australian woman. I have a relatively successful media career for my age, given the current economic climate. I currently live and work in Indonesia. I have always tried to give back to the communities in which I live through volunteering and I don’t have a criminal record. I do have a gym membership though. I’m doing OK. Oh, but I forgot to add, I am fat.

Actually, I should say obese, according to my BMI. 

And apparently this makes me some kind of social pariah who should be the target of intense public ridicule and scorn, no matter what food I may or may not put in my mouth, no matter how many times a week I work out. 

Continue reading "Why is the weight debate full of so much hate?" »

This week parliament will debate a bill to establish a national Preventive Health Agency, reminding of that classic Mark Twain observation: nobody is safe while the legislature is in session.

On The Punch Federal health minister Nicola Roxon insisted that she was no nanny statist, and that the purpose of the Agency was about saving lives and reducing health costs.

Most modern governments understand the follies of outright bans, such as the failed US Prohibition movement from 1919 to 1933. However, the Agency plans what it sees as the next best thing.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: The nanny state will nag you to death" »

Next week Parliament is set to consider legislation that is another first from the Rudd Government – Australia’s first agency dedicated to Preventative Health. 

Currently the media abounds with stories about our obesity epidemic, rising rates of chronic disease and problems with alcohol and tobacco.  This Agency will help us do something about those problems. 

As much as some media outlets find the labels irresistible, this isn’t about creating a nanny state, or nagging people into being ‘good’.  This Agency will be staffed with experts who will work hard to find the best possible ways to help us be healthier – and reduce our health bill as a result.

Continue reading "I’m no nanny, it’s about saving lives and the system" »

Does anyone else find it quite frankly perverse that in affluent first-world Australia so much time is spent fretting about the supposed weight problems of our children when UNICEF figures show five thousand kids across the globe die every day essentially because they can’t get a clean glass of water?

I sure as hell do. But here we go again. Last week the Rudd Government’s Preventative Health Task Force Report called for a ban on junk food advertising on TV before 9:00pm and for the use of toys, cartoon characters and celebrities that appeal to children to be phased out. But the Australian Communications and Media Authority is against the banning of those TV ads.

The reaction? A seething white-hot fury coming from nice middle class homes all over Sydney. How can anyone possibly put corporate profits before our kids’ health?

Continue reading "Junk food doesn’t make kids fat - junk parents do" »

The Elites are back in town – that is those people who tell us endlessly that they know better than the rest of us how we should eat, drink and presumably be merry or melancholy are back with a vengeance.

And they are never satisfied – their self belief is ever growing if you give in a bit they push even further to enhance their power and control.

Not satisfied with demanding new taxes for alcohol to make it so expensive that they can kill the wine industry and dictate what and when we drink, they then move on to tell us what we can or cannot eat and how we should look.

Continue reading "Is beauty now in the eye of the Body Mass Index?" »

Fine dining fans will be thrilled to hear that the world’s most famous restaurant – McDonalds – has just made a bold pitch for the haute cuisine end of the market with the release of two new burgers made with prime export-quality Australian Angus beef.

“Served on a sourdough bun and with gourmet trimmings for $6.45 and $6.75 respectively, the burgers represent a premium option for cost-conscious diners” a Maccas spokesman said this week.

Many people will think this latest marketing ploy is a disgrace. And I agree with them.

Continue reading "Take your kids to Maccas with pride" »

If you took the kids to McDonald’s on the weekend then brace yourself: you may just have landed yourself in hot water with child welfare. While you might claim you were engaging in an entirely innocent and harmless activity that has been going on for decades, you were in fact abusing your kids.

That is if you take the word of UK Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell who recently labelled parents who feed their overweight kids junk food child abusers. Platell was particularly incensed by the failure of a healthy eating plan sponsored by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, due, in her opinion, to parents who insisted on feeding their kids junk food at home.

Platell’s branding such behaviour child abuse is part of a growing trend in which the definition of child abuse has been radically expanded to include pretty well any behaviour or point of view to which someone, somewhere objects. Platell isn’t the only one who subscribes to this view.

Continue reading "Abusing the term “child abuse” is dangerous" »

So long, farewell, and thanks for all the flab.

Goodbye “Dance Your Ass Off”. Goodbye to the lurid outfits and the ridiculous hats that Australian audiences for but one brief week got to sample. Goodbye to the prospect of a weekly side-serving of self-abasing, mortifying attempts at burlesque routines and swing-dancing in the name of farewelling the extra kilos.

Channel Nine in its estimable wisdom and impeccable taste broadcast the first episode of this part dance competition, part ritualistic humiliation of overweight wannabes for Australian audience’s viewing pleasure a couple of weeks ago.

Continue reading "Finally, modern TV masters the art of humiliating the fat" »

So Fat-shionistas (their word, not mine) have come together for the launch of Full Figured Fashion Week in New York, and larger women all over Manhattan are excitedly gathering in anticipation of clothing that is actually on trend and made in big-girl-friendly sizes.

It seems too good to be true after the recent too-small-clothing debate, with UK Vogue Editor Alexandra Shulman calling for designers to up their sample sizes.

Five years in the making, the event organizer Gwen De Voe is hoping to get the attention of fashion designers globally.

“The main objective is to show the consumers and buyers that there are other designers out there.”

She’s expecting 1500 people to attend including retail buyers and plus sized customers all looking for a solution to their what to wear dilemmas.

Continue reading "Fatshionistas are hip, but can they fit into the dress?" »

Enforcing a blanket ban on advertising certain foods to children is not the answer to solving Australia’s obesity problem.

Activists and some politicians bleating for a ban on advertising high fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) foods on all media before 9pm need to get real.

Arguing that television adverts for HFSS foods are almost totally responsible for making people overweight, especially children, is an extraordinary leap of logic.

Continue reading "Changing ads on TV won’t tackle the obesity epidemic" »

The outsourcing of responsibility for your own stupid behaviour to our nanny government continues apace with Kevin Rudd’s cockamamie plan to effectively pay people to stop shovelling tons of junk down their throats while sitting on their bum watching the telly.

Central to this plan is the utterly laughable claim from the 2007-2008 National Health Survey that 68 per cent of Australians are obese or overweight.

This figure says nothing about the real health of many thousands of Australians, but plenty about the ludicrously narrow definition of obesity.

Continue reading "Hey Kev, get your hands off my modestly-sized beer gut" »

A new preventative health agency is set to be established in the coming months that will tell people what they can eat, drink and certainly not smoke.

It will also attempt to monitor how much of this bad behaviour we are indulging in by working out how fat we’re getting. It’s also likely going to aim to get us fit and exercising as “communities”. 

So be prepared to be awoken by a megaphone wielding Nicola Roxon who will no doubt lecture you on why you shouldn’t be hung-over as she accompanies you to the local common for some invigorating star jumps.

The fat patrol are no longer vigilantes, they’ve been given their own agency.

Continue reading "Open up, it’s the fat police" »

Low-carb beers are a beer of the moment. They are the “IT girl” of the beer world with their sales growing at a remarkable 900 per cent per year and every man and his dog who owns a brewery clamouring to get one on the market.

Despite this, you won’t find too many brewers bragging about the beers in any sense other than the technical achievement in producing them. Beer marketers and brewery bean counters will sing their praises endlessly, but the actual brewers seem to stay silent on them – a little like Hunter S. Thompson might have done if he had had a sideline writing Mills and Boon novels.

When they do mention them it is usually in the pragmatic terms of giving the market what they want. The key to the beer’s success – apart from their light flavour profile – is in their name: low carb.

Continue reading "Fruit versus lager: exploding the myth of the beer belly" »

A Parliamentary committee looking at obesity has recommended, among other things, Government-funded stomach stapling operations and a national fat register.

In all there’s 19 recommendations, including the obligatory education campaigns, further discussion of tax incentives, and better regulation of the weight loss industry. But much of it is small arms in the face of this marching army.

Take a 360 degree spin around this intersection in on the southern outskirts of Sydney to see what health authorities are really up against.

View Larger Map

Continue reading "The epicentres of Australia’s obesity epidemic" »