Obesity is increasing

Of the many issues affecting the food industry today, one of the most influential is obesity and what businesses can do to reduce their potential impact on this increasing trend.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the National Health Survey of 2007-08 on 11 May 2009. The last in depth survey of this level was done in 1995. The new survey shows some frightening new statistics, which will have an impact on not only food businesses but the community as a whole.

The Body Mass Index (BMI) in the new survey shows that 68% of adult men and 55% of adult women were overweight or obese. In 1995, 64% of men and 49% of women were considered overweight or obese. The BMI is a relationship between height and weight, and is the recognised method for measuring weight increases and therefore obesity.

For adults the highest proportion of people who were obese / overweight were in the middle to older age group range with 79% of men aged between 65-74 being considered obese / overweight and for women it is the age group 55-64 with a level of 68%.

If this is not frightening enough, the statistics for children now being considered obese / overweight has risen from 5.2% in 1995 to 7.8% in the last survey. The obesity statistics for girls have not changed since the last survey but for boys the proportion that is considered obese has gone from 4.5% to 9.7%.

This has significant implications for the food industry and particularly for those food businesses targeting children. As a result of these findings, there have been renewed calls for changes to food legislation to address this significant health issue.

Even though BMI has been used as the measure for this survey and obesity in general, there has been some discussion recently about whether it is the ideal measurement tool, as it does not take into account that some people are simply heavier set and may not in fact be overweight /obese. There is also some thoughts that people who have above average BMI scores are actually healthier than those whose BMI is within the acceptable range.

According to the author of The Obesity Myth, Paul Campos, using the BMI standards Brad Pitt may be thought to be overweight and George Clooney would be considered obese.

The 2007-08 survey can be found on  the National Health Survey at the www.abs.gov.au The survey also shows other interesting results, including alcohol and fruit / vegetable consumptions.