"You may think I’m joking when I say that there are now Australian schools which have banned icing on birthday cakes and have mandated what food children can bring to school, but I’m not. I wish I was."

Why?

What's wrong with setting the boundaries, especially considering the revolting stuff kids bring to school to eat these days? So you do mind the schools being firm, but you don't mind the big food companies being manipulative? Or am I just being "alarmist"?

Children have been targeted by government because putting the focus on the young has the greatest potential for preventing adult obesity. Prevention is cheaper than cure. Paradoxically however, government still invests more money treating obesity than in preventing its occurrence.
I have often wondered if the Body Mass Index which is used to measure overweight and obesity will eventually be manipulated (like employment figures) to lower the statistics. However, there are a lot of vested interests involved in the issue, and it is in their interests to keep people fat.

I think you're being very disingenuous. While you make a lot of generalised statements and selectively choose a few statements from a small number of studies, I think it is undeniable that being overweight does, statistically, make you more predisposed to a large number of diseases, including circulatory and heart problems, diabetes and cancer.

As for your inconvenient 'facts', it is quite easy to make a single piece of information look good when it is taken out of context. For example, you claim that even though women engage in less physical exercise, they are less overweight than men. Could it be the fact that women tend to eat differently, tend to eat less, tend to drink less alcohol and are more conscious of the types of food they eat? Turning to your second 'fact', could wealthier people be healthier because they exercise more, eat better food (i.e. food lower in fat) and are generally more aware of health issues, despite the fact that they have more 'labour saving devices'? I mean, what is this, the 18th century? In case you haven't noticed, most people have cars, washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, etc., even though they may not be 'wealthy'.

Trying to draw a causal link between two isolated indicators is not good science. Perhaps the truest statement you made in your article was that the "word “science” is stretched to breaking point with nutrition". I think we're all open to examining the question of just how much of an impact diet and exercise has on longevity and quality of life, but let's not let this debate descend into spin.

It sounds like the same science used in the GW debate. In time it will change as it has been doing for a long time.

It certainly does sound like the Global Warming debate, runner.

The wholesale manufacturing of "controversies" that don't actually exist in mainstream scientific research is really starting to get on my nerves.

The flip-flopping blockbuster-breakthrough science stories you read in magazines are NOT the stuff of mainstream science.

The people known as "nutritionists" are often NOT real scientists, but often just journalist/celebrities.

I have seen nothing to convince me that the *perceived* crises in Global Warming science, nutrition, or developmental biology are anything more than a series of mass-media/interest-group beat-ups. What *really* needs examining in Australia is the low level of general scientific education, and our trust in sensationalist newspaper stories.

It sounds to me like the author is in denial. You only have to look at any group school photograph from the 70s compared with any from the 2ks and reality will quickly hit home, you don't need any doctorate to know we are raising a bunch of fatties.

You can say there is not a problem because it has not been 'proved' to your satisfaction, but don't stop intelligent intuitive people taking initiative and trying to fix this issue before it becomes a bigger health problem for these children in the future.