Preventative Health

It being Melbourne Cup day yesterday you probably started drinking at about 10 am and missed this story, but in another shock horror study researchers have found that we as Australians are drinking more than ever.

Contrary to some studies that began to indicate a decline in our habit, the National Drug Research Institute has found we’re apparently putting it away like Brendan Fevola at Brownlow night. This increase has been attributed to the amount of wine that we’re drinking, because apparently we’ve just worked out how much alcohol the stuff has in it.

One might think that such a finding would elicit some kind of response from the Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon. Like an abusive PE teacher she frequently reminds us that we’ve been drinking too much, eating too much and we’re slob of a nation who will never make the athletics squad. It might even be an opportunity to look a bit further into something that every major health body in the nation and the Henry Review has championed: that is a volumetric tax on alcohol.

Continue reading "One tax you won’t hear the Government wine about" »

The National Health and Medical Research Council might know a fair bit about health, but they don’t know anything about cooking.

The NHMRC last week released the innocuous sounding Assessing Cost-Effectiveness in Prevention report. The document is the result of five years of research by people who take carrots, nuts and celery into work in plastic lunch boxes, and think the rest of us should do the same.

The report has at its centre some fairly predictable calls for smokers to be taxed out of existence with an immediate 5 per cent increase in tobacco taxes (on top of the 25 per cent increase in April this year), a 10 per cent increase in the tax on spirits, and an increase in the legal drinking age from 18 to 21.

Continue reading "In defence of salt" »

With the majority of middle-aged Australians either obese or overweight the direct contribution of their excess fat to poor health outcomes is potentially staggering.

Over the next 20 years it is likely that overweight and obese Australians will experience 700,000 more hospitalisations and 120,000 more deaths related to weight-related diabetes and cardiovascular disease (including heart attacks and strokes) compared to the same population who remain healthy and slim.

The calculated cost to society in terms of health care alone is $6 billion. The cost of losing loved ones and productive members of our society is probably incalculable.

Continue reading "Building healthier bodies can start with healthier towns" »

Newsflash: smoking is bad for you.  So, apparently, is drinking to excess.  And, wait for it, regularly gouging on fatty foods is no good either.  It’s shocking, I know.  Better go get a coffee to help get over it all; but do make it one of those low fat, caffeine free types so as to look after yourself.

Maybe, however, you happen to be one of the 99 per cent of people who knew these things to be the facts of life already.  You may still engage in one or some of them, but you do so knowing that there are risks.

This informed consent that you grant yourself is under threat.  A new buzz-phrase is sweeping the bureaucracy and is being visited upon us all.  It’s called “preventative health”.

Continue reading "Motherhood health report tells us what we already know" »