Weigh-in may help obesity fight
By Jane Bunce
September 14, 2006
A PLAN to weigh children when they are immunised at 18 months would help doctors raise the awkward issue of obesity, a prominent GP said today.
Dr Rob Walters, immediate past chair of the Australian Division of General Practice (ADGP), has seen 12-month-old infants already showing signs of being overweight.
Autopsies of Australian children as young as seven who had been killed in road accidents showed streaky fatty deposits in their blood and heart vessels, Dr Walters said.
"It's just mind-blowing," he said in Canberra today. Dr Walters said doctors were generally good at talking to parents about overweight children, "but sometimes they duck that issue because they don't want to offend mum".
Linking a weigh-in with the immunisation program would give doctors a means to raise a child's weight with parents and discuss appropriate nutrition and exercise.
"Why shouldn't we have a requirement that the child has a body mass index done when they are vaccinated at, say, 18 months," he said.
"It's a tool, that's all it is, to raise an issue that's a very sensitive issue."
Dr Walters was speaking today after the launch of a television community service announcement on obesity, produced by the ADGP and the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC), that will be aired nationwide from next week.
The advertisement promotes healthy eating and regular exercise.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Christopher Pyne, denied that producing a positive nutrition ad was an acknowledgment of the effectiveness of junk food advertising.
Calls for bans on such advertising have been repeatedly ignored by the government.
"I'm sure that advertisers know (junk food advertising) encourages them to buy their products, but people have to make their own decisions about whether they do buy their products or not," Mr Pyne said.
"I think that's where the debate has gone off the rails.
"When parents say to me, 'My child wants to go to McDonald's because they see a junk food advertising commercial', I say, `Well, you don't have to take them. You make that decision'."
Mr Pyne said state governments had to take more responsibility for childhood obesity because they controlled issues including exercise programs in school curriculums, school canteen menus and urban planning that encouraged car use.
Dr Walters said the ADGP had backed away from its previous call for junk food advertising to be banned in children's viewing hours because the industry had begun to self-regulate.
AFGC chief executive Dick Wells said the industry was working, too, on a voluntary but uniform code of food labelling.
Childhood Obesity
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