Kids already sick from obesity: study
Wednesday Oct 18 13:19 AEST
Almost one in 10 boys in year 10 have liver damage because they are too fat, a new study shows, and one in five have high blood pressure.
The report comes as new figures show the cost of obesity in Australia reached $21 billion last year, including $3.767 billion of direct financial cost.
An Access Economics report released on Wednesday found obesity has caused more than 100,000 Australians to suffer type two diabetes, and almost 380,000 suffered cardiovascular disease and 225,000 suffered osteoarthritis because they were too fat.
At a national obesity forum in Canberra on Wednesday, Sydney university associate professor Michael Booth also launched a new study showing obesity begins causing disease when Australians are still in their teens.
His research team took blood samples from 500 Sydney year 10 students and measured their risk of getting diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and whether they already showed fatty liver disease.
Prof Booth said the study found 15 per cent of children had elevated insulin levels, which was the first step to type two diabetes.
It equated to 77,000 NSW teenagers - almost enough to fill Sydney's Olympic stadium - who had elevated insulin levels, he said.
And almost 10 per cent of the 15-year-old boys and five per cent of girls had liver damage because they were overweight.
"Around 20 per cent of our boys have high blood pressure," he said.
"It's a frightening story.
"These are the kinds of figures we'd expect to see among 40-year-olds."
His study confirmed about one in four Australian children was overweight or obese, with the prevalence peaking at 30 per cent among grade four children.
This compared with about one in 10 children in 1985, and one in five in 1997.
"It's going up, fairly rapidly," Prof Booth said.
He said the study showed the rate of increase of obesity among girls may be starting to slow, but it was of great concern that the trend was accelerating among boys.
But contrary to conventional wisdom, Prof Booth said his study showed children were actually increasing their amount of physical exercise.
He said about 30 per cent more children were doing one hour or more exercise each day in 2004 than in 1997.
But the study confirmed children were eating more junk food such as soft drink and fried chips.
Childhood Obesity in Australia
Linear Mode
