|
|
SummaryObesity is a massive and growing problem in Australia, with increasing numbers of people suffering diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancers, heart disease, depression, as well as sleep apnoea and arthritis - just to name a few. So what does this mean for us personally in terms of wellbeing, quality of life, employment, and our life expectancy? And what does it cost us as a nation in health care, lost participation and lost productivity? If things continue to worsen at the current rate, how grim is our future? TranscriptJEFF McMULLEN: Good evening and welcome to Difference of Opinion. The world is facing an obesity epidemic, according to the World Health Organisation, and it is fast becoming a massive problem in Australia too. For the first time on record, the current generation of children might not live as long as their parents. With 60 per cent of Australian adults and at least 25 per cent of our children overweight or obese, this looming crisis is now one of the most serious threats to our nation's wellbeing.To debate the causes and the solutions to this epidemic, please meet tonight's panel. Paul Gross is one of Australia’s leading health economists, and Director of the Institute of Health, Economics and Technology; Professor Louise Baur is Director of Weight Management Services at Westmead Children's Hospital. Dick Wells is the chief executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, and Boyd Swinburn is Professor of Population Health at Melbourne's Deakin University. A warm welcome to you all. And, with us each week, our cartoonist, Warren Brown. WARREN BROWN, CARTOONIST, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Thanks, Jeff. You have got me all worried. I have to sort of suck it all in tonight but I'm looking forward to it. It will be a great night. JEFF McMULLEN: We will be back to you soon, big fella, thank you. We have been hearing, all of us, for some time now that this nation is putting on weight at a dangerous weight and that it is affecting our health but just how serious is the obesity issue? Paul Gross, you’re just back from overseas, how would you sum up the epidemic that’s headed our way? PAUL GROSS, DIR, INSTITUTE OF HEALTH ECONOMICS: I came back from overseas overweight, so I’m like a large number of people I’m going to talk about tonight. The problem can be answered in two ways. 60 per cent of us are overweight or obese, that is the adults. One in five children are obese and one in 10 are overweight. The trend has doubled over the last 20 years. No Government has been able to reverse that trend. And one more general statistic which might be of use 40 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women believe that they are not overweight or obese, even though, when we measure their body mass index, they are. So the cost implications of that are quite profound. I estimated that 6 per cent of total health expenditures in our nation are due to being overweight or obese or lacking physical activity. But that ignores the costs of treatments that are now being seen in our kids - the cost of the gallbladders and the livers, hypertension, the raised blood pressure and the orthopaedic problems that are emerging. These are problems that are just starting to emerge and being treated. There is the cost not in my estimates of the earlier treatments that will be required to deal with obesity and the earlier diagnoses of heart disease in kids from a very early age. JEFF McMULLEN: Louise, could you come in here now and tell us, from your studies what will be the cost to the our children? Why is it that we are now having this warning that they may have a shorter life expectancy than their parents? PROF. LOUISE BAUR, CONSULTANT PAEDIATRICIAN, WESTMEAD HOSPITAL: We do know that one in four children are overweight or obese in our community of Australia and we know that overweight and obesity is associated with a range of immediate health problems, such things as heart disease risk factors, abnormal lipid blood profile, high blood pressure. We know overweight, obese, particularly, adolescents carry risk factors for liver disease and risk factors ultimately for diabetes. There has been a number of cross sectional studies in population status here in Australia showing that young people and children carry increased risk factors, particularly if they are over weight or obese. What that means long term, I suppose, we are all waiting to see, to some extent. There have been longitudinal studies that have followed up overweight and obese children in young people into adulthood. Those studies started, 30, 40, 50 years ago and we know that – and before the obesity environment started and they were done in places such as the US and the United Kingdom we know that those young people, when they were followed up all that period of time later, had an increased risk of heart disease in adulthood, increased risk of cardiovascular disease and so on. So we know that’s a real risk factor. What it means for these young people entering adulthood in a much more obesogenic society now we can only speculate. We anticipate they are going to have a much higher risk of getting type 2 diabetes early, in their 20s and 30s, for developing fatty liver disease and maybe ultimately long term very significant liver disease, early heart disease, risk factors for cancer and also things like arthritis and so on. So, very significant health problems early on as they enter adulthood. JEFF McMULLEN: Professor Boyd Swinburn, if there is an epidemic, why are we still in a state of denial about it? PROF. BOYD SWINBURN, POPULATION HEALTH, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY: Well, I think there has been a fair amount on the front pages about it, and, so, people who have not heard of the obesity epidemic, I think, have not been listening to the press but there is an amount of denial, particularly amongst parents around overweight in their children and amongst adults themselves. We do go into a state of denial about our own body size, so I think there is a lot of denial at an individual level but add to that the problem that is facing governments, that is facing the food industry when we come to deal with it, and because that requires a substantial amount of money or investment, potential loss of money for the food industry, there is a lot of denial around that as well. DICK WELLS, CEO, AUST. FOOD & GROCERY COUNCIL: I think, on the contrary, I would say there is no denial on the food industry's part at all, Boyd, and, as you well know, the industry has recognised this problem and has been part of finding a solution for a number of years. The food industry well recognises the problem, and when we talk about the magnitude of it, Jeff, I think we need to be careful about lumping together obesity and overweight because, as Louise would know, there is a group of children in Australia that are under nourished, so we need to be careful about what interventions we are making at one end of the scheme, we are not actually doing damage for the others. From a food industry perspective, we are willing partners to find solutions in this area. I think we have moved past the dispute about whether there is any issue, not that there ever was a dispute from the food industry about an issue in this, quite frankly, and we are willing partners about try to find solutions. JEFF McMULLEN: Let's bring our audience in early. Do you yourself find evidence that we are going to fat, that in fact obesity is a serious problem, that it rises to this epidemic proportion that is being described here tonight? What is your own experience? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think there’s - I believe there is no denying that there is a problem but I'm from a generation where we had lard spread on white bread, sprinkled amply with salt, and today sugar, salt and fat have become the axis of evil. And in many cases they are. But what we lack today is the fundamental of what a kilojoule is, and that is a unit of energy, and a unit of energy is energy in, energy out. If we are not exercising and my children do not have the same opportunities, nor my grandchildren, to exercise in the same way as I did, and, to expand that sugar, salt and fat or, in my case, the beautiful lard with salt on white bread. JEFF McMULLEN: Another question? Yes, here in the front row. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think there is no doubt that obesity amongst children and into adulthood is going to consume our health care budget. I think it is beyond question - it is going to happen and it is happening and we I'm an obesity surgeon. I recently saw at Westmead a child 160 kg at the age of 12. Now, this is a terrible, terrible problem that we have to face, and between 12 and 15,000 Australians are dying each year of obesity related diseases, so this is a reality that is here that we need the address. PAUL GROSS: This then takes us to a major problem. Why is this thing so much like global warming and why do we need to act now? There are some very great similarities. The failure to act now means we’re building up a whole lot of consequences we will not want to talk about. If there is no collective action by individuals, by corporations and by Government, unless there is collaboration, this problem cannot be solved the same with the environment. We are starting to normalise the problem of being overweight and obese, it is becoming acceptable to do so. The environmental causes of obesity are not well understood but, worse still, solutions are not yet in place to deal with those environmental eventualities, so we now starting to focus on individuals, and we have to be very careful about blaming victims. There is, in my view, listening to that last comment, a danger that we have already missed the tipping point in obesity, and this has been solely due, in my view, in Australia, to action by Government that can only be called benign neglect. JEFF McMULLEN: Warren Brown, what is your take on this super sized problem? WARREN BROWN: Well, I’ve had a couple of ideas, Jeff. One is - I was listening to the gentleman in the audience talking about sugar, salt and fat before, which I found interesting – sort of a very tasty kind of an ensemble - and I have a fellow here with the great cartoonist line, "Waiter - there is a fly in my soup," and the waiter saying "You should try one with sugar, salt and fat, they’re delicious!" And another way around this, I thought, is, of course, exercise, we were talking about before. I do not think all foods are necessarily all – you know, all sorts of fast foods and greasy deep fried foods are necessarily bad for us. You eat things like fish, and the counter is very long, and chips is at such a distance where you can click at the end, then you can sort of wear it off between courses.
|
|
|
|