This whole question is the wrong one. For the most part obesity is related to poor nutrition and insufficient physical activity. These children did not get to this point overnight. Where were their GPs or schools? Why didn't they intervene in some way - identification and referral on.

Please Mr Rudd give us a health system that will prevent these sorts of problems form occurring. Enable our general practices to employ nurses and allied health practitioners to work on these issues long before they come to surgery. Reward general practices (not general practitioners) that keep their patients at a healthy weight. You will benefit by smaller pharmaceutical costs, less lost time from work, and happier voters.

Im glad someone is saying this. I underwent gastric banding after countless attempts to lose weight. Sure it helped me to lose weight but at what cost. I now cannot eat socially because of risk of vomitig and my weight loss has not been sustained, despite the fact that I eat hardly anything. I have contemplated having the wretched thing removed however it is going to cost me $5000 which I cant afford. There needs to be more education about the dangers of this procedure rather than selling it as the be all that it's not.

I just wanted to add that I agree with the author in that I dont think 14 year olds would have the ability to manage the band

Gastric banding is not something handed to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet.
Australia is much further advanced than USA in this area of surgery and they are very strict in their guide lines as they do not want complications for people. Lap banding is a very invasive tool in the aid of obesity but is not the complete answer. As with all tools the user is the most important part in the success or failure for the battle is in the mind. My success story involves my latest round of blood tests coming back with all results in black. I give all the glory to God for only with the saving grace of Jesus have I been able to win the mind battle. Finely Abi don't give up, use the internet to get knowledge or seek help from your doctor. I have had 2 strokes from colestrol imbalance with a specialist telling me that I only have another stroke and death to look forward to because it is in my jeans .
Regards Richie 10

My English primary school had a tiny concrete playground yet we had outdoor team games every day and were bussed to monthly swimming lessons at a suburban pool. We had an annual sports day on a nearby field and some of us always qualified for the county Children's Day sports event. Few families had cars. We walked, hiked or rode bikes everywhere.

My high school scheduled daily sport, gym or country dancing. It had hockey and cricket pitches (planted in wartime with vegetables), showers in both pavilion and gym, lawn and clay tennis courts, netball and ‘rounders’ courts, a bicycle shed, and regular free medical checks of height, weight, teeth and flat feet. Hot, two-course school dinners were nutritious and filling.

Food was rationed until 1955, and the few fat kids I recall were either wealthy or mentally deficient. We were threatened with 'sugar diabetes' if we took an extra spoon of sugar. Fast food was fish and chips with peas or pickled onions.

Pocket money was earned by hard work and saved for better things than lollies, like the 5th form trip to France. Smoking would get you expelled from school, and ladies didn't enter pubs without a male escort. Cautions against tobacco, drunkenness and waste were as much part of the curriculum as exercise, though film actors sold out, and still do.

Arriving in Australia in 1960, I was astonished at the paucity of physical exercise and facilities for sport in schools.

Parents who knew what their kids were missing took up the slack at weekends and after school, running Little Athletics and other sports in time that should have been for relaxation, visiting relatives and passing on of domestic skills. Dads had tools and planted gardens, mums breastfed their babies, cooked the meals, knitted jumpers and made their own clothes — and were there when their kids came home from school.

Then came the 1970s when it suddenly took two wages to make ends meet, and commercial television hijacked our children's education, health and home life with comfort calories. THAT was when the fat hit the chin.

Then arrived The humanist world view, Geoff Whitlam, drugs, hippies, the femanist, new age inlightenment, evolution and modern progressive thinking, all sumed up in one word rebelion [against the status quo] change for changes sake, modernism, and inflation. Has the change been for the better or the worse. It all depends on your hope.