TRANSCRIPT
It's being described as Australia's biggest health problem.
A new report says the number of Australians living with obesity has nearly doubled in the past decade.
From 3.9 million in 2012 to 6.3 million in 2022.
Meaning more than 60 per cent of the Australian population is now classified as overweight or obese.
Advisor at the Obesity Collective Dr Terri-Lynne South says it's something which is especially alarming for children.
"Particularly when it comes to children and adolescents, if they are struggling from this chronic health condition that we are calling obesity so young in life, it means they're potentially living with this medical condition for a lot longer years than someone who develops the condition as an adult. And as such, the longer that you are carrying concerning excessive body weight as in body fat tissue, the more there is risks of the related health conditions."
The report from the Obesity Collective has highlighted the relationship between obesity and disadvantage.
Higher rates of obesity have been found in rural and regional areas, poor communities, areas with lower levels of education, and Indigenous communities.
Stephen Simpson is the Collective Leader and chair of Obesity Australia.
"Any community that is socioeconomically disadvantaged, marginalised, living remotely or rural or remote, or even on the verges of our bigger cities, where the options for healthy diet, for example, are low compared with the more affluent. That's a set of circumstances that's going to increase, substantially increase the risk of obesity, and they're the circumstances that are often those experienced by our culturally and linguistically diverse populations."
The Obesity Collective is calling for widespread change on how obesity is treated and thought about in Australia.
Especially the narrow approach, where people are told to simply eat less and move more.
Dr South says stigma is everything.
"Stigma, bias, discrimination is one of the biggest barriers for anybody trying to access healthcare, let alone trying to access healthcare for this chronic condition called obesity. And I think it's not just the individual stigma of the young person, but the associated stigma that the whole family can feel as part of that, particularly in a young person, it's not an individual treatment. It's very much a family affair, and that makes it even harder to try and treat something that's a chronic, complex condition. We need to treat it within a family unit."
There has been little movement from the federal government on obesity in Australia.
But recently there was a push from an independent MP to curtail the level of junk food advertising being shown.
Independent for MacKellar, Dr Sophie Scamps, says the federal government should be doing more to combat these statistics.
"There's actually the National Obesity Strategy, which has been on the table for the last two years, and what I'm also calling for is for the government to fund that in this budget. It's a multi-pronged strategy that would address this very significant problem. We know that people in the unhealthy weight range, it causes so many chronic diseases like heart attack, stroke, diabetes, obesity, dementia, all these things, and we already have our hospital system that is overwhelmed and ambulance is ramping. We need to do something to prevent the problem rather than trying to treat it at the other end, which is obviously not working."
