Child Obesity alarming
October 18, 2006
According to the report of Access Economics,
obesity has made more than 1 lakhs Australians facing the
problem of type2 diabetes, almost 3.8 lakhs were facing cardiovascular
disease and 2.25 lakhs suffer in osteoarthritis. This report
shows new figures of obesity in Australia reached $21 billion
last year, on which $3.767 billion of direct financial cost.
Michael Booth who is the associate professor
in Sydney University his research team take blood samples
of 500 Sydney 10th year students and measured their risk of
getting diabetes and cardiovascular disease and whether they
already showed fatty liver disease. He also added that this
study found 15 percent of children have elevated insulin levels,
which was the first step to type2 diabetes.
He explained it as a frightening story and
equated to 77,000 new teenagers, which is enough to fill Sydney’s
Olympic stadium who have elevated insulin levels. 10 percent
of 15 year old boys and 5 percent of girls facing livers damaged
due to the overweight problem. He also said "Around 20
per cent of our boys have high blood pressure and these are
the kinds of figures we'd expect to see among 40-year-olds”.
According to his study one in four Australian
children was overweight or obese with the occurrences peak
at 30 percent among grade four children and compared it with
about one in 10 children in 1985 and one in five in 1997.
Prof Booth said “It’s going up fairly rapidly”.
According to Prof the study shows that the
rate of obesity increases in boys as compared to the girls.
He also said that 30 percent of children were doing one or
more hour exercise each day in 2004 than in 1997. But the
study shows that children were eating more junk food such
as soft drink and fried chips.
Read the complete news article here:
http://www9.sbs.com.au
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