Topical Teaching

Dr Jennifer O’Dea from the University of Sydney claims that Australia’s childhood obesity problem is an “exaggeration”. An exaggeration?

Dr O’Dea also said the scale of this problem for Australian children has become increasingly overblown.  “People have to stop exaggerating the numbers about childhood obesity – that’s not to say that it is not an issue but you know, hysteria, fear campaigns and exaggeration are not very scientific … In children and teenagers, obesity has been stable really since the late 1990s … and around Australia, it is still about six per cent.”

Whilst I don’t subscribe to hysteria or fear campaigns it is my experience that obesity is still an area of deep concern.  Whilst the numbers may have stabilised in recent years it has not sufficiently decreased.  This isn’t about “blaming and shaming and finger pointing and focusing on how the parents have failed,” as Dr. O’Dea asserts, it’s about taking enough of an interest to help tackle the problem rather than sit on our hands.

I agree with Dr O’Dea that a junk food tax is not the answer, but I find that downplaying the problem beacause it isn’t getting worse is simply not responsible.

Tags: Children, Education, Family, Fitness, Health, News, Nutrition, Parenting, School

This entry was posted on November 7, 2010 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Childhood Obesity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.