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Is freedom of choice killing us? With Obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease rates rising is having a free market with no rules/limited regulation or self regulation creating an unhealthy nation.

While there is continued debate regarding the marketing of unhealthy food products, food labeling and other policies to reverse the current trends there are those who advocate that we should have the freedom to eat what we want when we want.

However if you look at the big picture is having an open, free market leading to positive long-term outcomes for the nation.
You can go to KFC and buy the double down burger which may seem fantastic but what is the real cost? Or a family meal for under $20 from McDonalds, a meal which is full of high levels of fat, sugar and salt can be freely available in an open market without restrictions or regulation?

Is the marketing of highly processed foods containing high levels of fats, sugar and salt to an unsuspecting consumer a good thing?

However have we lost our capacity to make informed decisions as to the long-term health of society.

There are many examples where having an open market and giving people freedom in certain liberties to choose what products to buy and what price.
This may seem fantastic in the short term for example the dumping of cheap fruit and vegetables on the Australian market however in the long term the true cost is becoming dependent on to 2 major retailers and destroying the local agricultural industry.
In the long term we pay higher prices and have less fresh fruit and vegetables.

Cigarette advertising is another example where regulation leads to lower consumption which in the long term reduces the incidences of lung cancer and other smoking related deaths.
People are aware of the dangers but still choose to smoke so regulation is a necessary evil.

So is having unlimited, unregulated really that great in the long term?

Written by Andrew Talati

Educating children about the benefits of healthy eating can start with showing kids how to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

What children learn from a young age can set the habits and behavior for later on in life as adults.

Ultimately parents need to take some responsibility for educating their children with healthy eating habits. This starts with an appreciation and understanding of the basics such as consuming plenty of fruit and vegetables on a daily basis.

An awesome initiative by Stephanie Alexander involves helping primary schools students growing their own vegetables in the schoolyard and harvesting their produce for cooking in the school’s kitchen.

This initiative spans 180 schools across Australia and involves children age from 8 to 12 years of age.

Today the Commonwealth government has contributed $12.8 million in supporting this invaluable program. These costs help offset any specialised staff and additional infrastructure that may be required in the food production process.

However the program only reaches a small minority of schools cross Australia, while the majority of the 6000 schools missing out.

Once again it comes down to budgetary constraints with very limited funding for a program that has the potential to have a positive effect on reducing Australia’s high proportion of people overweight and obese.

With an alarming 60% of Australians now overweight or obese with me to curtail this alarming statistic by starting by educating children.

It seems the government has the funds to squander $7.5 billion on Victoria’s appalling public transport system since it was privatised in 1999 or the $50 million per year that the Australian GrandPrix costs the Victorian taxpayer.

Surely such initiatives that affect the long-term health of our country deserve a higher allocation of funds.

While fruit and vegetables serve as the foundation for a child’s diet, many parents have experienced it can be a challenging task to get kids to eat their greens.

By giving children a greater understanding of how the fruit and vegetables are produced from a single seed/sapling, cultivation, harvesting and consuming what they produce, there is a greater probability of success as more sensors are associated with the process.

For children having the sense of touch with the plants, cultivating the smell of the garden, and the richness, tastes and smell one gets from freshly grown vegetables it helps children have lifelong associations with fruit and vegetables.

There are also other benefits that children learn responsibility as the plants must be tended to on a daily basis.

Ultimately it is about sending a positive messages about nutritious eating habits that will carry through to adulthood.

Work safe Victoria conducted a survey in conjunction with their Work Health program to get a snapshot of the health of the Victorian workforce. Over 100,000 people were surveyed over a 9 month period from July 2009 to March 2010.

While it was fantastic to get an accurate breakdown of the current health situation of our workforce, it was very disturbing to see the results.

In assessing the risk categories of Type II Diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the proportion of those at high risk constituted 39% of those surveyed.

Add to that another 14% that had an increased risk of type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The interesting part of the survey was the self-diagnosis section where people were to make a self-assessment of their current state of health.

Twenty percent of men and 14% of women who were of the opinion that the health was very good but after taking into consideration of their blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and waist measurement they where in fact in the “high risk” group for developing type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Another measurement was a biomedical and lifestyle assessment of the workers which included a graph showing number of risk factors that each work worker was susceptible to. The biomedical risk factors included high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar levels and waist measurements.

The lifestyle risk factors took into consideration all the stuff that people regard as a means of relaxing and chilling out, this included excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, a poor diet, i.e. inadequate consumption of fruit and vegetables, and lastly low levels of physical activity.

The information was represented in a graph that formed the traditional bell shape starting with the percentage of people having 2 risks factors being 17.2%/28.8% for men and women respectively, having three risk factors being 28.9%/30.6% for men and women respectively, and disturbingly 4 risk factors being 25.8%/19.2% for men and women respectively.

Lastly those that had five risk factors where 15.4%/7.9% for men and women respectively.

The survey paints a picture of not only the state of health of our workforce but can be extrapolated to the greater community.

With over 190,000 Victorians with Type II diabetes and a staggering 15,000 additional people diagnosed every year, somewhat does this mean in the long term?

With the projections based on the current levels, it is anticipated by 2025 that 83%/75% of men and women respectively will be either overweight or obese with the corresponding increased risk of contracting type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Is a current government strategies really tackling this epidemic and are the current policies in dealing with this problem sufficient.

In simple terms, the Victorian government spent a staggering 14.4 billion in obesity related expenditure, surely devoting greater funding towards health programs would reduce health care costs in the future and therefore save the government $$$ in the long term?

While the virtues of a high speed internet can be argued at $43 Billion, or other capital works projects such as the desalination plant, surely funding can be allocated to improve the health of our nation?

The Gillard Goverment’s announcement that the Labor government will not be introducing the junk food tax begs the question whether the government is truly taking this issue seriously or will they merely commission another report to confirm what we already know.

One such investigation to improves the country health, in particular managing and reducing the countries growing obesity rate is the report generated from the Preventative Health Task Force that recommended introducing a tax on energy dense foods or commonly referred to as junk food.

This comes at a time when childhood obesity is at epidemic levels with the recent report into Child Development and Play commissioned by homeware’s giant Ikea found that a disturbing 66% watch more than four hours of TV per day.

A similar report from the US from the Journal of pediatrics similarity found 66% of preschoolers viewed more than two hours per day of content from a TV or computer screen.

Unfortunately implementing strategies and policies which at a the minimum stop the obesity rate let alone reduce the percentage of children overweight or obese seems to be weighted down by bureaucracy and the effects it will have on the food manufacturers and distribution landscape.

While childhood obesity, or more specifically obesity for the general population is a complex issue, we need to be a cohesive approach from not only government, but the educational providers, parents and media companies.

The key areas that need to be addressed but may prove to be unpopular are:

1.Introducing a junk food tax

2.Restricting marketing of junk food to children through all types of electronic and printed media

3.Food labeling laws to remove misleading and confusing packaging

4.Changing the school canteen menu to exclude food & beverages that are high is salt, sugar and fat, limiting processed foods and supplying fresh fruit while encouraging the consumption of tap water

5.Subsidies for healthier foods at day care centres, pre school and primary schools

6.Parents limiting sedentary behavior such as watching TV, playing video games, surfing the internet, talking on mobile phones, sending sms and watching DVD or streamed content from the web

7.Stopping the sponsorship of any event that is primarily attended by or marketed to children by junk food companies

8.Programs to increase childhood exercise

9.Educating children about the benefits of healthy eating

10.Stopping the association of brand ambassadors with junk food

While there seems to be a genuine government interest in tackling childhood obesity, we need to see action rather than debate or the commissioning of more reports, or reports that analysis all the existing reports.

If this situation is allowed to continue unabated, we will have a generation of children with Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease dying before there parents.