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The weight of expectation: Tackling a disease affecting six million Aussies is more than just fat-shaming

Already derided for their weight, will obese children really benefit from being weighed when they get to school? Madonna King investigates

Oct 03, 2024, updated Oct 04, 2024
More than 30 adult illnesses are caused by childhood obesity. (File image)

More than 30 adult illnesses are caused by childhood obesity. (File image)

A call by nurses to weigh and measure school children in a bid to combat obesity should be seen as more than a ‘fat shaming issue’.

And to dismiss it so summarily – as we have – is ignoring a heart-breaking problem that is linked to more than 30 diseases – from cancer to dementia to type 2 diabetes.

The proposal, by the Australian College of Nursing (ACN), to collect height and weight data of all school children might not be the preferred option; and indeed that is the verdict of almost every expert in the nation.

So what do we do to turn around the lives of the one-in-four Australian children and adolescents – or the 38 percent of Indigenous children – who are now overweight or obese?

How do we encourage girls to continue to value sport as they enter the teenage tunnel? Too many of them, impacted by peer judgement and adolescence, decide to mothball their bathing suits and ballet costumes. And all participatory sport ceases.

How do we convince parents that having a child who is overweight or obese risks more than 30 different diseases, including more than a dozen types of cancer?

Obesity is now a major public health issue and it is not just tied to disease. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has found that it also is associated with poorer wellbeing, poorer academic performance at school, increased health-care costs and a bigger risk of being obese in adulthood.

And surely the evidence of that is in the fact that studies have put the number of Australians living with obesity now at 6.3 million.

It’s understandably a deeply emotional topic. Social media is absolutely brutal in comparing our teenagers’ lives to the perfect lives of the models, who now masquerade on their screens as ‘the girl next door’.

Photographs – from holiday destinations to dinner parties – are digitally enhanced to ensure everyone is picture-fit; svelte bodies, perfect complexion, and electric smiles.

And the shame and stigma that can target those who don’t fit that digital barometer can have devastating consequences; many capital city hospitals are struggling to find spare beds for those fighting eating disorders.

That’s why this issue is so vexed and complex and nuanced. And it is why nurses, who see the problems born of obesity, raised their hands with the suggestion to weigh children.

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But can’t we just see that as the beginning of a discussion we must have?

If they are wrong – and that’s what experts tell us – we are all culpable here.

Who amongst us is over 45 and didn’t make their seven-year-old finish their veggies before having dessert? I did, regrettably, and every bit of evidence now suggests that might not be a clever strategy.

Where was the outrage over that horrible show, the Biggest Loser, where beautiful human beings were valued according to the number of kilograms they lost?

Why has it taken experts so long to dump the body mass index – the BMI – as a measure of general health?

Why are some – too many – now thinking that Ozempic is the answer to all our prayers? Because it allows us to have our cake and eat it too?

School nurses might not have all the answers, or on this occasion even the correct one, but they see the problem daily – and their well-intentioned contribution should be the starting line, not the finishing post, in this debate.

Instead of dissing them, perhaps it might be better to ask why junk food advertising has been allowed to flourish. Or what research we need to change the genetic influence making a play here.

Or why healthier foods are not made cheaper. Or how we increase physical activity as part of the school day. Or how we teach teen girls to value how their body works, not what it looks like.

Perhaps we – politicians and policy makers, educators, parents and health professionals – are all foundering here.

But it doesn’t help any child to silence those who simply want to draw attention to a growing public health issue, in which we should all have a stake.

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