Obesity

[injuryupdate]

Great article by Richard Hinds in SMH:

It's slim pickings for the fat police
By Richard Hinds
July 3, 2004

You're staring at the drive-thru menu trying to work out which of the sundaes would be best to dunk your curly fries into when this guy comes on the radio. He reckons Australians have a problem. Apparently, we are obese. That's fancy talk for big, porky, fat.

So you drive home, wipe the grease from several of your chins and hunt through the cupboard for the bathroom scales. Haven't seen them for awhile. Bit like your toes, really.

You finally dig them out from behind the wooden driver and the Rod Laver-autographed tennis racquet, step on and the dial starts spinning like Arnold Schwarzenegger has just taken his turn on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. When it finally stops, the number that comes up wouldn't flatter a pregnant rhinoceros. Turns out you are part of the problem.

The good news? You'll never waddle alone. A survey recently alleged Australia was the second-fattest nation behind the really large behinds of the US. And, not content to shame we large-ish grown-ups, now the alfalfa-munching calorie police are picking on our big-boned children.

Just this week, the Federal Government announced it would spend $116million during four years to address the problem of childhood obesity. A key part of this program will be to emphasise the importance of participation in sport.

While some may be relieved the Government has recognised a problem that is as obvious as the rolls of blubber bulging from beneath the crop-tops of the nation's youth, the answers to this initiative should be swift and to the point: Can we have fries with that? And haven't you left it a bit late?

While we are constantly fed jingoistic lines about our world-class athletes, anyone with a child at a government school can tell you the importance of sport and exercise has been so greatly diminished in "this great sporting nation" that children are given as little as one hour per week of formalised physical education. Yet, the same children are encouraged to spend more time gazing into computer screens, presumably to be able to kill some digitally enhanced dragons when they plonk themselves in front of their home computer or do internet banking for their technologically challenged parents.

Of course, it is not good enough to leave the physical well-being of our children to under-resourced teachers. We should be urging our children to join clubs and play after school and at weekends. But while there are fine entry-level programs like the AFL's Auskick, Australia's sporting system has become more like that in the US, where only the best continue to participate into adulthood.

Indeed, some competitions have become so streamlined that only the elite athletes are encouraged to play beyond their early teens. Others who want to play will discover their local league is poorly funded or, if they are unlucky enough to live in the country, has simply shut down.

And not content with merely creating a nation of observers, we are also telling them how they should observe. Rather than enticing them to the stadium where they can at least stretch their legs, we are conditioning them to watch the game in their loungerooms, where they not only provide ratings points for rights-holders, their senses can be bombarded with an endless series of advertisements for fast food, soft drink and alcohol.

This cultural change has all happened under the noses of successive governments eager to spend their money on eye-catching programs that will produce gold medals rather than healthy children - and at the urging of sports bodies looking to fund their elite competitions.

So when some guy with bushy eyebrows power-walks down the street in an embarrassing green-and-gold tracksuit and, in only slightly more flattering terms, calls us and our kids a bunch of fat slobs? Well, sorry Prime Minister, I don't think we should cop this retrospective attack on our democratically grown and nurtured beer guts. We aren't going to swallow the political platitudes, unless they happen to be crumbed, fried and washed down with the liquid sugar of our choice.

If the Government really wants to aid those suffering obesity, what about spending some of those millions installing bigger seats at the cricket? Kate Moss couldn't squeeze both butt cheeks into those tiny pieces of plastic we're crammed into now. And has anyone on a government health committee tried getting back through those skinny aisles carrying six pies, four buckets of chips, a tray of beers and a Mars bar?

[injuryupdate]

It gets me annoyed that we are still having trouble getting any government to pay attention to the problem of sports injuries (New Zealand government excepted). Exercise is the major key in the obesity debate, yet injuries are a major disincentive for people to exercise. Yet the government attitude is that sports injuries are the fault of the person who sustained them, and they want nothing to do with them.