The Victorian Government, in both 2006 and 2007, released its 'State of Victoria's Children Report'. The report contained the most comprehensive data ever compiled on the health, education, diet, exercice regimes and so on of young people in Victoria between the ages of 5 and 25. The 2007 report's data on obesity showed that about 93% of young people in Victoria were not obese. Barring a sudden and unexpected outbreak in binge eating in the meantime, it's likely that the situation remains pretty much the same today. There is, in other words, no widespread obesity epidemic.

A deeper analysis is likely to show that higher levels of obesity are found in particular demographics and specific geographical areas. A considered response would move away from society-wide moves to ban or label certain types of food and drink and concentrate on helping parents to buy and prepare more healthy food for their children in the high obesity areas. A less publicity driven version of Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food might be a good place to start, with the added element of subsidies for low income people to help them buy fresh food. Of course, that would require real planning and a willingness to identify those groups in society that are most at risk. The 'Grim Reaper' anti-AIDS campaigns of the past show how reluctant our governments are to do anything that might have a real effect.

I can't comment on the validity of the argument that kids are getting fatter nor the AFCG's attempts to head the inquiry off at the pass. Certainly the media interest in this topic would lead us to believe that it is a growing problem.

It would not be surprising that those with a vested interest on both sides (the grocery and diet industries) will argue with veracity the position which bests suits their self-interest.

If childhood obesity is indeed on the increase, one way to combat the interests of the grocery industry in this regard is to make children more aware about the food they eat, how it is grown and the perils of too much junk food. Perhaps those in the most vulnerable demographics would be a good place to start.

There are a few admirable projects that have hit the media of late - that of the school food garden where children get to grow, care for and then cook their own healthy food.

http://www.stephaniealexander.com.au/garden.htm

And the Gardening Australia school garden project:

http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_ranks=20&collection=tv&meta_v=gardening&num_tiers=1&query=school+garden

The following is from an ABS report at http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/aus/ah06/ah06.pdf

There is a lack of recent national data on overweight and obesity among children and adolescents, with the most recent being that from the 1995 NHS. Using the standard international definitions of body weight, the prevalence of overweight (including obesity) among children and adolescents aged 2–18 years was 19.5% for boys and 21.1% for girls in 1995 (Magarey et al. 2001).

There is a range of evidence that the prevalence of both overweight and obesity in Australian children has risen markedly in recent decades. A study of data for those aged 7–15 years from five population surveys conducted between 1969 and 1997 illustrated that, between 1985 and 1997, the prevalence of overweight increased by 60–70%, obesity increased two- to fourfold, and the combined prevalence in the overweight and obesity categories doubled. The findings were consistent across data sets and between the sexes. For the period 1969 to 1985, there was no change in the prevalence of overweight or obesity among girls, but among boys the prevalence of both overweight and obesity increased markedly (Booth et al. 2003).

The New South Wales Schools Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey found that the measured prevalence of overweight and obesity combined among young people in New South Wales (from Kindergarten to Year 10) had risen from 20% in 1997 to 25% in 2004. Overall, the prevalence of obesity among boys was 7.7% and among girls it was 6.1% (Booth et al. 2006).

Similarly, the Western Australian Child and Adolescent Physical Activity and Nutrition Survey found that the prevalence of overweight and obesity among students aged 7–15 years increased from 9.3% of boys and 10.6% of girls in 1985 to 21.7% of boys and 27.8% of girls in 2003 (Hands et al. 2004).

Try googling Diet 4 Idiots for imformation that will show some informed light on the subject. Don't be like Pauline and only tell us about the problem

The author writes 'It won’t surprise many readers to discover that “weigh-ins” conducted by telemarketers suggest that our children are less fat (and exercise more) than we thought.'

It does not surprise anyone who observes the obvious (man's adamic nature) that unless parents teach children self control they will end up obese like many parents who have not learn't any self control themselves. Why is the author suggesting Parliament step in when essentially it is a parental problem? Learn to say no to your kids and no to yourself. You might be surprised what can be achieved. Unfortunately our humanistic brainwashed psychologist will work against any commonsense.

Nothing will change until we acknowledge the roles of inequality in childhood obesity, and also curb advertising to children, these corporate pederasts grooming and manipulating children to desire unneccessary and unhealthy goods.

Inequality affects both the quality of diet families can provide for children, both in terms of incomes and in terms of our housing affordability problem. Big business in concert with retailers manipulates the CPI to stay artifically low by identifying the items in a "cpi basket" and holding their prices low, while jacking up the price of everything else.

Welfare allowees are only granted meager increase in line with CPI increases while pensioners get rises according to increases in MTAWE. Billions of dollars of government money goes to well-heeled housewives to stay home and to property investors, often with no or weak means testing, while the real poor are made to feel bad when the real parasites are the well-heeled who should practise what they preach instead.