The Australian federal goverment’s health and ageing committee is holding an inquiry into obesity. Public hearings have begun.
Inquiry into Obesity in Australia
The House of Representatives Health Committee is to investigate the increasing prevalence of obesity in the Australian population, focusing on future implications for Australia’s health system. The Committee will recommend what governments, industry, individuals and the broader community can do to prevent and manage the obesity epidemic in children, youth and adults.
Read more: Parliament of Australia website, 28 March 2008
Bans, labels would tackle ticking fat bomb
The Obesity Policy Coalition recommended the Government should ban the marketing of unhealthy food to children in all forms, encourage supermarkets to develop house-brand healthy eating ranges of food, investigate taxing unhealthy food to subsidise the rising cost of fruit and vegetables and develop a national traffic light-style labelling system showing food nutrition levels to be developed and put on all packaged food.
Read more: News.com, 21 June 2008
Australia’s future fat bomb
The Baker Institute presented a new report to the Obesity Inquiry showing that 26 percent of adult Australians are now obese. The report outlines what would happen if everyone lost 5 kg or more, and how this could be done.
Read more and download the report: Baker Institute, 20 June 2008
Australia: Obesity time bomb ‘has already gone off’
“There is no obesity time bomb. The bomb has already gone off,” an obesity expert from St Vincent’s Hospital told the federal parliamentary health committee inquiry on Monday.
Read more: Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May 2008
Call for tax rebates on fresh fruit and vegetables
Dick Telford told the inquiry that the Government could lower the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables through a 30 per cent tax rebate.
Read more: The Australian, 13 May 2008
