So apparently, 80% of Australians are going to be obese by 2025

[AjasLipstick]

I live in Australia by the way. I'm British though. The reasearch was done by the World Health Organisation apparently.

Here's a slightly shitty link to an article

www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/obesity-can-lead-you-on-a-dangerous-path-to-ill-he/2590837/

That is absolutely worrying isn't it? I feel quite shocked really. When we moved here three years ago, I was nervous as I was convinced it was a very sporty country...full of fit people!

There are, it seems to me, a lot of very big young people though. And I now see more overweight OLDER people than ever. When I was younger, (I am 44) old people were bird-like...tiny and thin...they'd seen wars etc.

Now they're all the baby boomers and a lot of them are very large.

It worries me...my DC are both slim but what if that changes? We do eat well and exercise....but EIGHTY percent!??? It seems so many!

There is no doubt overweight and obesity is rising but it annoys me they reckon it is going to be pretty much everyone in 7 years and when they claim NZ, where I am is third fattest in the world. It's really odd, many people we know are very active people and use the bush walks, mountain bike tracks very frequently but no, we are all fatties.

We are not actually, we are well down the list. Actually the fattest nation in the world is Nauru and then Pacific Island nations like Tonga form many of the rest, with lots of middle eastern nations. US is in the top 10.

NZ is unique in the developed nations for having a high population of Maori and Pacific Island people (I've got Maori and Samoan in the mix for example), it would be over a 1/4 of the population while other nations have much less as a proportion of total population. And also there are a few Pacific nations which are protectorates and who we administer like Tokelau. When you look at the stats they say one in three is obese, and another third overweight but within that 50% of the Maori population is obese and for Pacific Island it is 70%. 12% of children overall are obese (21% overweight) , but 18% in Maori and 30% for Pacific islander. They say with the new stats obesity rates rose 3% from 2006-2007.

So it isn't evenly distributed through the population and I think that one of the reasons why the health messaging is so ineffective is that they don't address that different groups have different needs and change what they do depending on that. This includes the different diets, I love the Samoan version of chop suey but my goodness it's salty and you can just about feel your first heart attack creeping on every time you indulge.