The federal government has responded to the National Preventative Taskforce recommendations set out in the document Australia the healthiest country by 2020.
Lots of noise has been made about the tobacco related recommendations some of which the government has agreed to. These are significant tax hikes (as previously blogged about), plain packaging for cigarettes and significant investment in social marketing such as the National Quit Campaign.
The task force also made recommendations on prevention, alcohol, obesity and physical activity. In light of Andrew recent post about bariatric surgery I thought it would be interesting to see what commitment the government has made to fighting the obesity epidemic.
Unfortunately, the government has taken no new action in this area with Nicola Roxon stating there is still no clear evidence of what fights obesity. The Obesity Policy Coalition was very disappointed there were no regulations implemented on junk food marketing to children and also no extra taxes placed on unhealthy foods.
Evidence based policy making is vital but if we know high calorie diets and low levels of physical activity are significant contributors to obesity why are there no new policies aimed at these two areas. Sometimes something is better than nothing.
We know the history with tobacco control with he government being inactive on addressing this problem until 30 years ago. Since then the epidemiological evidence has proven there has been a significant drop in the prevalence of tobacco.
Lets hope mistakes of the past do not come back to haunt us again due to inaction regarding obesity.
Jessica
Interesting picture. I found this abstract in Annals of Neurology: Abdominal fat and dementia (http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelease/pressReleaseId-75217.html)
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. As someone said: "In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else." Even brain is not spared.