From The Courier-Mail, Brisbane - 21 September 2007
PM's CSIRO mail-out to fight childhood obesity
THE Federal Government is set to mail out a 10-point plan for healthy eating habits to school children.
Prime Minister John Howard said the CSIRO Wellbeing Plan for Australian Children would be mailed out to 1.9 million Australian school children.
"What it contains is a 10-point plan for healthy eating and healthy habits and is very practical advice," Mr Howard told ABC Radio.
"It's been devised by the CSIRO, and remember the CSIRO distinguished itself when it compiled a book called The Total Wellbeing Diet Book for adults, and that sold more than a million copies.
"And we think there now has to be a concentration on just basic commonsense, easy to understand advice from our scientific expert body for Australian parents because it's estimated that between 20 and 25 per cent of Australian children aged seven to 15 years are overweight or obese."
Mr Howard said poor eating was a big problem and which was being tackled in a variety of ways.
"One way in which we're tackling it is to communicate, from the people who know best, the simple advice about eating and exercise habits."
From The Courier-Mail, Brisbane - 19 June 2007
Call for traffic light food health labels
An international obesity expert has called on Australian food manufacturers to immediately introduce a traffic-light colour coded system on packaging to indicate if a food is healthy.
International Obesity Taskforce chairman Professor Philip James has warned Australia must move quickly with the plan if it is to make an impact on the obesity epidemic.
Under a voluntary scheme adopted by the UK Government's Food Standards Agency last year, supermarkets and manufacturers are encouraged to indicate the level of fat, saturates, sugar and salt in food by using red, amber and green colour codes.
"Six months ago this idea was considered radical, however detailed analysis of public understanding in Britain has shown it is the most promising single measure for informing the public about the quality of their diet and a potentially potent weapon in the fight against obesity," Prof James said.
"The evidence from supermarkets in Britain now is that the traffic lights encourage food manufacturers to improve the quality of particular products and the consumer immediately responds."
The Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council debated the merits of a traffic light system at a meeting in October last year, during a discussion on the possibility of introducing nutrition labelling on the front of packages.
The council has ordered an inquiry into uniform front-of-pack labelling, including the traffic light option.
From The Australian - September 29, 2007
Obesity doctor fights against a tide of mistrust
RUSSELL Broadbent is fighting back. Determined to overcome the expressions of grave concern and trouble he faces on several fronts - from injured patients and the families of those who died, from his peers, from the hospitals which ban him from performing a radical operation for obesity, and from health safety authorities examining every angle - the senior Gold Coast surgeon believes his critics are ignorant of the facts.
But yesterday, amid further accounts of adverse outcomes and a widening rift between Dr Broadbent and the hospitals, health executives provided evidence of his determination to do the operations.
Several patients, including a Merimbula woman Cath McWhae, 66, who says she was lucky to survive, and the families of patients who died have contacted The Weekend Australian to issue warnings about the surgery.
Other patients have expressed their confidence in Dr Broadbent.
Mark Doran, an executive of Ramsay Health Care which owns the Pindara-Gold Coast Private Hospital, spoke of "a number of documented incidents of undue persuasion and pressure placed on the hospital to perform the procedure".
He said Dr Broadbent had sent patients to the hospital to "plead" for the operation, and warned that one patient might kill herself if she could not undergo the surgery.
"Other patients of Dr Broadbent were encouraged by the doctor to contact the hospital CEO directly asking for dates as to when their procedure could be performed," Mr Doran said.
"Dr Broadbent informed the hospital that a patient who required the procedure would be suicidal if the procedure could not be performed."
By the time Pindara managers had become aware of the death of a patient, Rosanne Mafi, last year, "the hospital had already started a formal audit and clinical review of the procedure by this time and put in place processes to ensure it would no longer be conducted at Pindara".
Mr Doran said that the review highlighted "four particular cases of interest", leading to Dr Broadbent being invited to a formal meeting. He challenged the review legally.
After being advised earlier this year of bans on the procedures, according to Mr Doran, Dr Broadbent "attempted to book patients and suggested Pindara's actions might be considered contrary to a number of legal duties, not least Trade Practices law".
It has been a similar story at the Allamanda Private Hospital, also on the Gold Coast, since its managers organised an audit and decided to ban BPD procedures after at least four deaths.
Insurers had determined the risks were too great to provide indemnity. But Dr Broadbent refused to accept the rejection.
From The Australian - September 29 2007
Obesity surgery figures escalate
If there was a diet to be tried - fad, pharmaceutical, alternative or otherwise - chances are Micaele Lalot has given it a go.
From hypnotism to programmed meals and prescription pills, the 43-year-old mother of three says she struggled to control her weight for 20 years with no long-term success, until she finally resorted to gastric band surgery two years ago.
By then, Lalot weighed 110kg, and was getting heavier -- and with a body mass index of 40 she was morbidly obese. Her blood sugar and cholesterol levels were poor, and a family history of diabetes and heart disease loomed large in the background.
"After 20 years I was resigned to the fact that I was always going to be a large lady -- but when I realised my cholesterol and blood sugar were up, I decided I had to do something drastic," she says. "I didn't want to be giving myself needles for the rest of my life."
While most banding patients lose an average of about 60 per cent of the extra weight they're carrying, Lalot lost even more. In the 12 months following her surgery, she dropped from 110kg to 60kg -- and so far she's kept it off. Her post-surgery BMI of 21 falls right in the middle of the healthy range and her blood sugar and cholesterol have returned to normal.
Latest figures show Lalot is far from alone.
This week, health fund MBF released figures showing claims for obesity-related surgery had more than doubled in five years -- and the cost had nearly tripled.
MBF said while it only received 459 claims for obesity surgery in 2002, by last year that number had soared to 1102 -- and the cost shot up from $2.4 million to $6.9 million.
The nation's biggest private fund, Medibank Private, said its figures rose even more dramatically, from 641 to 1521 over the past five years -- including a 12 per cent increase last year alone. The cost increased at an average rate of 36 per cent each year.
Both funds expect the increases to continue.
"We're interpreting this as a direct measure of the severity of obesity in Australia," MBF's chief medical officer Christine Bennett said. "The surgery is clinically indicated when other methods have been unsuccessful -- it's a lifesaving operation and we're not suggesting it's being done inappropriately."
Not everyone is convinced.
Consumer health advocate Michele Kosky, of the Health Consumers' Council in Western Australia, is concerned market forces may drive up the number of operations when they may not be in the patient's best interest.
"Medicine is not quarantined from the market economy that we live in," Kosky says. "Clearly, for some patients lap-banding surgery is important as a last resort treatment. But there is widespread marketing of this procedure in a way that reminds us of cosmetic surgery -- and that might suggest a commercial imperative rather than a clinical decision shared with the patient."
There have also been recent concerns over one type of obesity surgery -- a relatively rare and drastic operation known as biliary pancreatic diversion. The Weekend Australian last week revealed an inquiry has been launched by Queensland authorities into these BPD procedures in the state, following a campaign by the daughter of a woman who died in horrific circumstances four months after the procedure.
But in general, and especially in relation to the much more conservative gastric banding procedure, experts say surgery is safe and effective.
In Lalot's case, the post-surgery regime was a challenge at first. She was forced to have nothing but liquid for the first two weeks, then mushy food like mashed potato or yogurt for another two weeks. But after nine months Lalot says she was back to eating whatever she wanted -- just smaller portions.
"I used to have maybe four slices of pizza, and then an hour or two later I'd have two more slices," she says. "Now I eat one slice of pizza, maybe two, and I'm full. I feel very contented afterwards. There's no going back -- and I never feel like I'm going without."
Associate professor John Dixon, head of clinical studies at Monash University's Centre for Obesity Research and Education, says that only a tiny minority of extremely dedicated obese people are able to lose large amounts of weight through lifestyle changes. Few manage to lose more than 10kg.
From The Australian - October 9 2007
Exercise not enough to beat diabetes
Getting the recommended 30 minutes or more of exercise a day may not be enough to prevent obesity and diabetes if it is followed by hours sitting behind a desk.
New Australian research reveals that millions of office workers, and others who sit still for long periods, could be risking their health even if they meet official guidelines for minimal physical activity on most days.
The findings - due to be presented at a conference in Adelaide this weekend - challenge the previous understanding of how activity affects health, and are likely to force a revamp of official activity recommendations.
As well as suggesting that spending a day at a desk is inherently unhealthy, the research, conducted by experts from Melbourne's International Diabetes Institute, also provide a warning for those who think an hour sweating in the gym provides a guilt-free passport to an evening on the sofa.
Lead researcher David Dunstan, the institute's physical activity research manager, said the findings represented "a total paradigm shift" because they showed that exercise and being sedentary influenced health independently of each other.
"It does have widespread implications for office workers who sit for six or seven hours a day," Associate Professor Dunstan said.
"The question is, is that 30 to 60 minutes (of recommended exercise) enough? Our research suggests it's not."
Jonathan Shaw, his co-researcher and deputy director of the IDI, said it was widely believed that measuring sedentary time and exercise were "two sides of the same coin, but that's not true".
"You can spend two hours a day being very active, and the remaining 22 hours sitting on your rear end," Associate Professor Shaw said. While the two hours of exercise would be beneficial, doing nothing for so long would erode that benefit, he said.
Someone who exercised for two hours and then spent more of the rest of the day walking, standing, or performing other simple tasks would be at a lower risk of diabetes.
Professor Dunstan, Professor Shaw and others published research in the US journal Diabetes Care in March that followed more than 8000 Australian adults over the age of 35 who did not suffer from diabetes.
They found women who watched more than two hours of television per day were at greater risk of obesity and diabetes even if they reported doing the recommended 30 minutes of exercise.
Subsequent research, overseen by Professor Dunstan and carried out by Genevieve Healy at the University of Queensland, replicated the findings, but this time used accelerometers to objectively measure the activity levels of nearly 200 subjects. "Her research is showing that the more breaks people make in sedentary time, the lower their metabolic risk," said Professor Dunstan, a VicHealth research fellow whose work has won him a Tall Poppy award from the Australian Institute of Policy and Science.
Adrian Bauman, a member of the expert panel that reviewed the federal Government's most recent physical activity guidelines, said the new research was "on to something important".
Obesity News from Australia
