Even though it may be known for its love of sports and the rugged, outdoor lifestyle, Australia and its neighbor New Zealand aren't far behind from the U.S. in the world's highest rates of obesity, the New York Times reports. What are the reasons behind these Oceanic countries becoming two of the fattest countries in the world?
The majority of adults (at least 60 percent) and about three quarters of children are overweight or obese in Australia, a staggering percentage following the country's rates of obesity tripling over the past three decades. Earlier this month, the United Nations published a report announcing that Mexico is the world's fattest country, closely followed by the U.S., but Australia and New Zealand are only slightly behind them.
Industrialized living comes with heavy, and often expensive, costs, and while obesity rates surprisingly appear to have plateaued in the U.S., researchers say they expect a rise in Australia across all age groups in the next ten years.
A sedantary lifestyle, high-fat and high-sugar diets, and love of affordable and heavily processed foods have all contributed to Australia's skyrocketing obesity rates, similar causes for growing waistlines in the U.S. over the past several decades. In addition to higher risks of developing obesity-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer, an overweight country is hurting the pockets of the government.
Reduced productivity, disability and healthcare have cost the Australian government tens of billions of dollars, Australian authorities claim, and health officials are struggling to find ways to combat the national crisis.
Public education, including school programs that teach children how to prepare fresh meals and information encouraging adults to swap sweets for fruit and the elevator for the stairs, have become more prevelant as the national government continues to pour money into public outreach.
Australian health proponents have even taken cues from New York's Mayor Bloomberg by joining forces with three health organizations, including Diabetes Australia and the Heart Foundation, to launch the health campaign, "Rethink Sugary Drinks." The group's studies show that Australian children and adults are consuming sugar in excess, and that half of all Australian children drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage per day.
The state government in Western Australia has even paid for television ads that target the overweight, obese and at-risk, warning against the risks of high-sugar consumption with eye-catching visuals like the insides of a man's intestines clogged with fat as he hesistatingly reaches for a slice of pizza.
"When you eat more than you need to and aren't as active as you should be, fat doesn't just build up around your waist," a narrator exclaims in one commercial. "A toxic fat also builds up around your vital organs, releasing dangerous levels of chemicals that bring heart disease, diabetes and cancer closer."
However, some like sociologist Deborah Lupton of the University of Sydney have criticized the ads for their reliance on shock value and questioned their overall effectiveness.
"The intention is clearly to invite the target audience - people who have a 'grabbable gut,' as the campaign's print media ads put it - to envisage the insides of their bodies as diseased, poisoned and repulsively overrun with deposits of viscous fat," she wrote. "It's likely that many members of the target audience may simply avert their eyes because they find the images so repulsive."
But Australia's national problem may also extend globally, as the country is one of the world's leading exporters of raw sugar, exporting more than 80 percent of its raw sugar to countries like South Korea, Indonesia and Malaysia. While it may appear that their own production of sugar is decreasing, Australia is instead having its sugar processed elsewhere before it is repackaged and sold in the country in the form of packaged foods, as discovered by researchers from the University of Western Australia.
"Customs data on imports of processed foods show that over the last 20 years there has been rapid and still increasing growth in imports of processed foods, many with high sugar content," the authors wrote. "Our conservative estimate suggests that at least one-sixth of the sugar in the domestic food supply is now imported into the country in this way."
