Obesity : An National Health Concern

Obesity carries many baggage throughout an obese person’s life and affects many Australian’s throughout the state. In current times, obesity in Australia has made its way to being one of nine National Health Priority Areas that was brought to the attention of Australian governments. The problems with obesity is that it carries many health conditions such as obstructive sleep apnoea, cardiovascular disease, renal dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, cognitive impairment and depression, cancer, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and osteoarthritis. Access Economics (2008) reported various estimates on obesity-related burdens in Australia. Obesity-related burdens comprises of cardiovascular disease by 21% with a population of 644,843, 24% of type 2 diabetes with a population of 242,033,

A simple strategy such as losing five kilograms has the potential to result in 27% to 34% fewer cardiovascular related hospital admissions and deaths over the next twenty years. Obesity plays a major role in todays and the future societies health and health care system. Action needs to take place in order to reduce the effects of this health issue. A few examples of this are: Creating more of an awareness of the effects obesity has on individuals and the community can help reduce the growth of this health issue. Educating people and children more on how to create a healthy lifestyle including healthy eating and exercise will reduce obesity greatly and describing practical strategies that would enable Australian to loose weight and keep the weight down will also have a positive impact on society.

Obesity is best referred to as the "red alert health zone". The thing that makes obesity that dangerous is the fact that today's society does not view obesity as a serious threat. It is important to understand the fact that obesity is not just being fat or having a BMI i.e. Body Mass Index greater than that of an overweight person. Obesity is a serious problem that can fatally damage the physical as well as mental health of a person. While all of us understand how obesity can affect the physical health, a few of us know how mental health is affected due to obesity. A person suffering from obesity is termed as obese. Such a person is usually a victim of mockery and insult due to his appearance. No matter how educated we are we as a society have failed to keep in account the fact that obese people are also humans and deserve to be treated normally.

Obesity is a public health issue that has devastatingly developed into a global epidemic. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of overweight and obesity is dramatically increasing worldwide at an appalling and intimidating rate with more than 1.9 billion adults aged18 years and older being overweight in 2014. Out of these 1.9 billion adults being overweight, 600 million were classified obese. While the issue regarding overweight and obesity are prevalent in all countries, the National Health and Medical Research Council stated that Australia’s obesity levels have been developing faster than any countries in the world over the past thirty years. Although obesity may have been primarily considered as a personal concern three decades ago; it is overwhelmingly a societal concern today in Australia. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare have measured that in 2011 and 2012, around 63% of Australian adults had the characteristics of being overweight and corpulence. That is over a quarter of the adult population in Australia being obese.

Obesity is a medical condition, in which a person’s excessive body fat accumulates to a point where it may have a negative impact on their health causing serious illness, disability and premature death. In Australia the rate of obesity has gradually increased over time, where in 2011-2012 it was found that 35.3% Australians aged 18 and over were overweight and 27.5% obese. (WHO reference)This health condition is the outcome of a range of social determinants that warrant attention. However this report will focus on and discuss two social determinants that could conceivably lead to obesity or being overweight.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines obesity as ‘abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health’. (1) A general measure used to monitor obesity is the body mass index (BMI). A person with a BMI of 25+ is considered overweight and 30+ is obese. Between 2011 – 2012 62.8% of Australians adults, aged 18+ were overweight or obese, with 27.5% of the cases being obese. This has increased by 6.5% since 1995. (2) The obesity epidemic in Australia needs to be addressed urgently as it is a precursor to most preventable lifestyle diseases and a BMI over 25 is the second highest contributor to burden of disease in this country. (3) According to WHO, worldwide the rate of obesity has doubled from 1980-2014. (4) In 2014-2015,

Obesity in America, is almost becoming as sensitive a subject as discrimination or racism. Iain Murray states, “Health statisticians use a formula called the Body Mass Index (BMI) to determine if individuals should be categorized as overweight.” We Americans allow ourselves to indulge in the idea that a simplistic scale can determine whether or not a citizen is healthy or overweight. The scale, which is a basis to determine health and proper weight standings for some, does nothing more than bring about improper readings and emotional distress to others and does not support good health standard.

Obesity levels of the adolescents are significantly increasing throughout Australia. Australia is known to be the …… most obese country. There is an estimated ……. males and ……. females obese in Australia, in 2012. In this year it is estimated that only 55.7% of Australians were trying to lose weight but only 30% were obese. It is said that “only one in three obese people are concerned about their weight”. The obesity rate has doubled over the years for young adolescents as now one quarter of children are predicted to be overweight. 80% of the adolescents that are currently obese are said to remain that way in their adulthood. Obesity is a concerning issue as it can cause coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, abnormal blood fats, metabolic syndrome, cancer, osteoarthritis and sleep apnea.Obesity is caused due to many factors such as time, budget, peers, advertising, age, accessibility, motivation,

The percentage of overweight and obese children in Australia, despite rapid increases in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, have remained mostly steady for the past 10 years, with 23 to 24% of Australians under the age of 18 classified as overweight, and 5 to 6% of the same demographic classified as obese. Through time Australia’s number in people suffering obesity has increased dramatically from 56.3% in 1995 to 61.2% in 2007-08. Compared to 1995, the proportion of Australians that were overweight in 2015 has fallen by 6%.

Introduction According to statistical data, Australia is currently more obese than America. Obesity in Australia over the past few years has been described as an ‘epidemic’ which is ‘frequently expanding’ (Ryan, 2009). Professor Jimmy Bell from the Imperial College in London who is an obesity specialist says that "Genetically, human beings haven't changed, but our environment and our access to cheap food has. We’re being bombarded every day by the food industry to consume more and more food and we are slowly losing the war against obesity.”

Data from the internet shows that obesity rates in Australia grew faster than any country in the world. World famous medical journal “The Lancet” published a study, according to Australian childhood obesity is close to 25%, adult as high as 63%. Now the Australian obesity levels have been compared with the United states, only slightly lower than that of New Zealand. Statistics shows that two out of every three adults are either overweight or obese. This is a cause for concern.

With the number of fast food restaurants rapidly increasing and bigger clothing sizes becoming increasingly apparent in shops, it is difficult to not notice the high risks of obesity hitting our nation. With the average height and weight for women in the UK being 161.6cm and 70.2kg [Office of National Statistics, 2010] and is considered to have 26.8 bodily mass index (BMI) which is considered overweight [NHS, 2015] and the average height and weight for men in the UK being 175.3cm and 83.6kg [Office of National Statistics, 2010] and is considered to have 27.2 BMI which is considered overweight as

With obesity having such as high prevalence in the UK, this piece of writing will look at the influence that obesity can have on

The first reason Hastings et al., mention is the weight gain as a result of eating food with insufficient calories. Hastings et al., stresses that almost 50 % of the population from Samoa has been diagnosed with obesity when compared to 30 years ago. In other words, the number of obesity has increased due to the people choices of consuming canned corned beef, popular in England. However, the authors do not detail if this source of obesity is only related to the canned beef consumption, presumably there might be some unclear evidences that played roles in gaining weight. By the same token, the authors also remark that a similar case had been noted in Fiji due to the swap from the production of their own fresh fruits and vegetables practices to canned soda and sheep fat

Obesity is classified as one of the extremely common and serious public health problems in the world. Overweight and obesity are the fifth leading global risks of mortality in the world (World Health Organization, 2009). Furthermore, they are one of the major factors of for a number of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer (World Health Organization, 2005). According to NHS UK, obesity is defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more for adults, and the UK 1990 growth reference curves are used to define obesity for Children (Cole TJ, Freeman JV, Preece MA, 1995). The growing challenge of obesity of Europe countries is remarkable among Asian countries .In 2008, 1.4 billion adults (35%) aged 20 and over were overweight and 500 million were obese (11%). More than 40 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2012(World Health Organization, 2014). That is the global obesity situation. Furthermore, the obesity problem in the UK is not optimistic, the UK has the highest obesity rates among Europe countries, and this trend has strikingly increased over the recent years to the point where more than 20% of the population are now obese. (University of Birmingham, 2014) However, the obesity situation in Singapore is more worrisome. In 2010, 40% adults aged 18 to 69 were overweight and 10% were obese which is more than double the level seen in 1992. (Ministry of Health Singapore, 2010) This essay will