Recent figures on obesity show some clear patterns; the poorer you are the more likely you are to be overweight or obese. The further you live from Melbourne CBD the worse it becomes. Alongside these figures are the rates of sugary drink consumption which largely mirror this divide. This is a profound problem for regional Victoria.
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The so-called obesity time bomb is a hideous explosion waiting to go off in regional cities across Victoria. If that language seems too alarmist then consider the comparison with the tobacco legacy. By 2004 when the high smoking rates of the 1940’s to 70s were being felt by the health system and estimated to cause 15,000 deaths nationwide, it came at the staggering social cost of $31 billion. The decline in smoking rates may be now yielding savings to the health system but at the same time obesity has soared.
More than one in four adults is obese, up from one in ten in the early 1980s. Worse still is the fact that about 7 percent of children are obese, up from less than 2 per cent in the 1980s, which means we are potentially dealing with a whole future generation at stake. Young people if permitted will down a lot of these sugary drinks. Last year it was estimated ten percent of the problem is directly caused by sugary drinks with a flow on cost to the community is $5.3 billion nationwide. Imagine how bad it could grow.
What is most staggering about a developed nation is that its experts should clearly recognise the major health problem of our era and yet so few resources and actions were taken to diffuse this bomb. For a Government that has already identified the growing black hole of Medicare costs for an ageing Australia, expedient and cost efficient preventive action is so underfunded while the policy to back it up is so lame. Food labelling has been neutered by the all-powerful food lobby and the spectre of a sugar tax particularly on sugary drinks is treated with horror or childish disdain. Yet this is only one small step that could make a difference and return much needed funds to health incentives. Back in the regions, we already know 70.1 per cent of its adults in western Victoria are unhealthily large. We know simple fizzy drinks are not alone in causing the problem but they are a factor and cannot be ignored. Similarly tax alone is not a magic solution but rather one of a raft of deterrents and proactive approaches to education, activity and transport incentives. Real leadership demands action not sleep-walking into a disaster.
