"Obesity is not a disease of the voracious, but of the most vulnerable, poor and uneducated."

My good, no wonder we are not making any inroads if this is what health workers think.

You may give up YOUR freedom, Amy, not mine and please do not include me in your stupid notion of "nation" - there is no such thing, you must have watched too many hours of poisonous propaganda!

Addiction addiction addiction is the problem. The obsessive nature of the human will raise it's ugly head always. Obsession towards war, food, drugs, money, sex, gay marriage, religion, non-religion, each other, saving chooks...the list of human obsessions is endless sadly...no hope for fat people exists unltill a new "drug" to combat addiction arrives.

It isn't what people eat, it is the amount of food people eat that causes them to become obese. You can exercise all you like, but why not just eat that little bit less. Cut out the morning and afternoon tea and supper, don't snack while you watch TV. Don't buy soft drinks, for the sake of your children's health.

The government can't make gluttons show restraint in what they eat, they have to do it themselves. It is mainly in poorer countries where incomes are low and food is scarce that obesity is not a problem.

Shops that sell food should have big slightly concave mirrors at the checkouts so that customers will see what they will become after they eat all the food in their trolleys.

David

It's just no accident that most of our obese people are also the least well off; which is the real "big issue" needing addressing as our most urgent single issue imperative!

And how do we do that by adding the GST to healthy unprocessed food?Or indeed, saddle the less well off, with a "great big" new tax?

WE need something beside simplistic thinking to actually address this "big issue"?

God save us from complex rationalists who leave university with no real world experience and a headful of untried and usually fundamentally flawed intellectual concepts?

Real genius lies in solving complex problems with simple fail safe, tried and not found wanting, solutions.

Like say, a cap and tax carbon solution?

Where is it written that one must have an ETS and additional billions earned by paper shuffling broker barons, to also have a cap?

With only that emission above the progressively lowered cap copping a penalty?

Allowing plenty of time and forewarning for those who want to avoid the penalty?

If everything that leaves these shores had some value adding added, we'd do two things; earn more export dollars and put everybody into reasonably well paid jobs!? More general income, less obesity?

Service industries (education finance) are just not safe as Britain found out to her immense cost at the start of the GFC!

And by embracing lower costing carbon free power options like say cheaper than coal thorium, connecting to micro-grids; we'd be able to do more of that value adding, as well as invite the energy dependent high tech industries to join the queue waiting to relocate to these shores?

Plus the hundreds of thousands of cashed up self funded retirees all needing basic low skill services, being fleeced yet again by debt laden, cash strapped, European Governments, devoid of creative or even new ideas?

But particularly if tax reform and vast simplification were part of the mix?

As we'd create if a single, stand alone, unavoidable expenditure tax were the adopted reform?
Rhrosty.

And what's worse beer and wine are chock full of calories-kilojoules - never on the label.

Are there any pleasures to live for?

Excellent article Amy. Hopefully in the future, sugar-laden processed "food" will carry the same health warnings as tobacco products.

We are always hearing about how much fat people cost us. We never hear how much of our OUR money is spent on telling us how much fat people cost us. Or how much this young lady costs us. Or how much other people paid to lecture us on what we should eat, and what we shouldn't eat costs us.

One the one hand, politicians moan and groan about people living longer, and they want to increase taxes to pay for that. On the other hand, they moan and groan about obesity, and they also want to put up taxes to stop them dying. That makes sense only to politicans.

Why not let people eat themselves into an early grave, and save the money to spend on the others who look after their own health without government nannyiing?

I quite liked this article! Well done the author! I'd like to encourage the young lady who wrote this to not be upset in the face of hostile comments.

I find the level of negative comments on here to be somewhat concerning. Rather ironic are the posts which demand better solutions without offering any in return.

There's a particular feeling of detestation one experiences when once comes into direct contact with the internet troll.. It's as though somewhere along the train of their psychosexual development they were interrupted. Perhaps they never quite managed to successfully complete the anal stage and as such their sphincters clench so tightly when they behold another's success.

It reminds them of the humiliation their parents unconsciously projected onto them during potty training.. This in turn contributes to protectively identified sense of shame which is ascribed to the target of their visceral attacks who take the shape of mommy and daddy in their psyches.

Having this need unfulfilled by sitting in front of a computer screen and attacking another they return to the fridge to get another Twinkie.. And the guilt/ shame cycle continues until they must yet again seek catharsis in trolling those braver and more successful than they are!

Alas It's the circle of life for these.. shall we say.. 'larger than life' internet trolls.. All one can really do in the face of all this is sit back, sigh and say, "hakuna matata".

"I find the level of negative comments on here somewhat concerning."

You're obviously new here Tiffany. Negative commentary is pretty much all that the regulars here can offer. That's why I usually don't bother commenting, though I still sometimes read the articles.

What on earth is a Bachelor of Health? It sounds a bit airy fairy to me, something you do if you're not up to an MD degree.

Then a Master of Public Health sounds like something designed for would be bureaucrats.

Well I'm with ttbn, I have no interest in being lectured by some young person who has just absorbed the latest fads handed out by academics. More talking heads, on the public payroll is the last thing we need.

Tiffy Trew,

Negative comments, eh? For negativity, I suggest you read aloud to yourself your own post. What a load of girlish bile!

Negative comments would be all of those not in line with your own, clearly. Are you so naive and juvenile to think think everyone who contributes to OLO is going to be greeted with gratitude and awe, particularly on hackneyed subject such as obesity?

'The government should do this. The government should do that. The government should tell us what to eat. The government should wipe our bottys.' Grow up and discover self-help and personal resposibility. You sound like a spoilt brat.

Dear Tiffy,

<<I'd like to encourage the young lady who wrote this to not be upset in the face of hostile comments.>>

That young lady is the hostile party.

It is her who uninvited wishes to interfere in our lives, using the full force of the state, including their guns and prisons, to dictate how we should live.

Should leading an unhealthy life-style become illegal, so that if one refuses to follow what the state deems as "healthy" then they are violently arrested and thrown into the "healthier" life-style of prison-life (presumably living longer in there...)?

Can you not see the slippery-slope, where if others are allowed to decide for you what is healthy and what isn't, then anything dear to you could tomorrow be declared "unhealthy" and denied from you? As I do not know you personally I cannot tell what it is which is most dear for you (in the way that for some people it is their fatty/sugary food), but surely there is SOMETHING which is, surely there is one thing or another which would make you extremely upset had the state took it away from you. Watch it: your turn could be next, you could become the state's next victim, then you would cry a lot.

Oh I'm remiss. I didn't realise that I was sharing this form with a whole bunch of libertarian brothers and sisters.

You guys are absolutely right!!

Government is bad!!

Everything the government touches is bad. It is incapable of doing any good and incapable of nuanced thinking (not unlike most libertarians).

We don't need a monopoly of force.

We should just let good people like Ayn Rand tell us how to live selflessly.. We should all follow the flawless logic of fellow libertarian moral objectivist philosophers like Stefan Molyneux. The man who believes in anarchism... as long as his voice rules. We should all get our news from Alex Jones because he's proved himself so right time and time again!!

And most of all we should never, ever, EVER consider the fact that there are times where State intervention has yielded positive results. That would be anathema.

I usually oppose any effort of government taking steps to dictate how we should live our lives - without exception.

But the issue of kids nutrition may be an exception.
Some of the kids these days are totally nuts with ADD type behavioral problems.
And parents aren't allowed to discipline their kids anymore and are literally being pushed to their limits.

I think nutrition might have something to do with it and if I'm correct, I must question why school canteens are feeding kids garbage if it's contributing to the problem.

Its only logical that schools should advocate eating healthy...

However, on the other hand, I loved eating sausage rolls and chicken, lettuce and mayo burgers at high school.
Tuckshop day broke up the tedious repetition of the school week and was something I looked forward to.
It was also a tool my parents could use against me to keep me from playing up!

Ultimately I'm not totally sure where to stand on this one, but I must admit I have more compassion towards people with medical issues that were no fault of their own and can't do anything about it than I have for people with obesity.

Obese people could have taken steps to change their situation whereas others have medical conditions that they cant do anything about.
- And I feel for them more.

Tiffy, Alex Jones is probably right about things more often than the news everyone else watches, and he is also helping people to be healthier with the products he sells to fund infowars.com

What exactly have you done to help people better understand nutrition and help them to become healthier?

Please don't criticise people who do more to help others than yourself.

Dear Tiffy,

I find several faults in Ayn Rand's teachings and I have no clue who the other two people you mentioned are.

If you look for selfishness, you can hardly find more of it than in those involved in government, be they politicians, employees or contractors.

I do not support selfishness, yet the one who is forced to give without consent, is denied the opportunity to be unselfish. When government "does" it for us, our sense of charity atrophies so like any unused muscle, we lose our ability to be good.

Once people organise on a voluntary basis, then and only then they get the opportunity to express the goodness of their hearts, yet involuntary territorially-based states as we now have, are the anathema not only to free-will, but to goodwill and the ability to refine one's character and motives so one comes to love and care for others. The state can undoubtedly produce POSITIVE results, no argument there, but it cannot produce GOOD results.

---

Dear Critic,

It is indeed a problem when parents are no longer allowed to discipline their children - so solve this problem, rather than patch it up.

When I grew up there were no school canteens: Instead, my parents wrapped up sandwiches and fruits in my bag every morning, which were tasty indeed - if you do so instead of giving money to your child, then you can control what they eat while in school.

it isn't what people eat, it is the amount of food people eat that causes them to become obese. You can exercise all you like, but why not just eat that little bit less. Cut out the morning and afternoon tea and supper, don't snack while you watch TV. Don't buy soft drinks, for the sake of your children's health.

Garbage Barbara. I eat one small meal a day. It is the same food, but less than half of what I ate 6 or 7 years ago. Then I was working hard on my property, today with a knee, hip & back problem I do very little exercise. Then I was slim, now I am over weight.

I am not much over weight, but only because I don't like being overweight, & try hard to limit that weight gain.

As a young bloke I ate more chocolate biscuits & cream cake than healthy food, but working hard, never gained a single pound, & was very fit.

With the mess that is science, where one day carbs are great, & next week a killer, the last people I would take nutritional advice would be academics, or bright eyed, bushy tailed young graduates.

OK. I have to ask about this one: "you can’t buy any food at the supermarket or tobacconist without junk food being at their eye-level."

Who buys food at the tobacconist? What food is sold at the tobacconist? If you're buying food in the tobacconist, surely allowing your children to see junk food isn't at the top of your list of problems?

That aside, there is some merit to the argument that education lies at the core of this problem. I went to uni with a woman who, in her frequent soapboxing about the cost of living, claimed that she fed her children McDonald's every night because she couldn't afford anything else. I was a bit stunned - at times when I've been down and out, I've managed quite easily to feed myself with fruit, veg and a little meat for substantially less than the cost of a Happy Meal. She was obviously clever enough to talk her way into university, and obviously driven enough to study in the hope of giving her kids a better life.

What was missing, then, was an understanding of nutrition and, perhaps, of budgeting. It seems that, in schools, the new Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education is moving away from explicit teaching of nutrition, which was (to the best of my knowledge) embedded in many state curricula. A missed opportunity? We can't force people to eat well, but education can surely help them to make informed choices about whether or not they do.

Obesity truly threatens people's health, they are at a risk of heart disease, diabetes, chronic disease, and others. Great lifestyle and regular exercise, "Make Healthy Normal"may be a good choice.
Steven from Creative Bioarray (http://www.creative-bioarray.com/).