Originally published October 21 2005
Health writer examines childhood obesity in Australia
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Perth lawyer Hal G.P. Colebatch talks about the cultural problems surrounding 1.5 million overweight children in Australia.
Banning junk food advertising on children's television programs as a way of combating childhood obesity just won't work.
Parents can merely switch off the TV, something which many parents seem to have forgotten, as they seem to have forgotten they are responsible for their children's diets and lifestyles.
It is parents who pack children's school lunch boxes, and they don't have to load them with chips and chocolates.
According to the NSW Health Department there are 1.5 million overweight children in Australia.
These figures suggest a cultural problem, not curable simply by censoring advertising.
Indeed, unless we try rationing and a compulsory physical-jerks regime along North Korean lines, the Government's capacity to trim fat is relatively limited.
Anyway, the problem would be fixed if more parents used common sense and exercised the kind of ordinary responsibility for their children that was previously thought to be a normal part of being human.
Sydney Morning Herald columnist Adele Horin claims parents don't have "the energy, the education, the time or the means" and need "more help from government to counter the corporate culture" because it "takes energy to say no".
Government and legislation, often turned to instinctively as the cure for child obesity, have actually been the cause of much of it, discouraging all sorts of even mild physical activity.
Britain leads the way here, but Australia is not far behind, and the British experience is a warning.
Children at one British primary school were prohibited from making daisy chains in case they picked up germs.
I know of at least two Australian naval cadet units that have closed down because of insurance costs, and that is probably the tip of an iceberg.
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