Easy solution to obesity? Fat chance

In a recent article British physicist Stephen Hawking pronounced obesity as one of the most serious health problems of this century, resulting from a sedentary lifestyle that is “putting millions of lives in danger”.

While this can hardly be denied, Hawking went on to say that “fortunately the solution is simple: More physical activity and change in diet. It’s not rocket science”.

Well, yes but…

Hawking, who I accept is one of the smartest people on the planet, is used to wrestling with extremely completed concepts and ideas and has rather fallen into the trap of seeing the easy solution to what is, in fact, a highly complex social problem.

Shortly after his interview, the Australian Government produced alarming statistics showing that obesity rates in the country were growing faster than anywhere else in the world, with almost 25 per cent of children and 63 per cent of adults overweight.

This is just the latest in a series of warnings. Successive Governments have taken it on board and various programs encouraging more active lifestyles and better diets have been introduced — with little or no effect.

This is partly because such programs are constantly running up against the commercial world’s promotion of tasty convenience foods, fizzy, sugar-filled drinks and sedentary pleasures such as computer games and 24-hour, multi-channel television.

But there is more to it than that.

Today we are bombarded with stories about people and lifestyles that are completely divorced from everyday experiences. The pages of down-market newspapers, commercial television channels and countless internet sites bring news and pictures of vast numbers of glamorous ‘celebs’ driving fast cars, eating in exclusive restaurants and wearing designer clothes that cling beautifully to their tanned and sculptured bodies.

These beautiful people are in our faces every day with their unattainable lives. How does this affect the spotty-faced teenage boy, the plain Jane supermarket checkout chick or the frazzled single mother balancing two jobs to keep the family afloat? They know that there is nothing they can do to even approach this lifestyle which is presented to them as the epitome of success.

So they give up – and the advertisers pounce.

After all, there are burgers that are better…and there are drinks that are the real thing. It’s the nearest most of them will ever get to the glamour world they see on their screens or in the newspaper ads. Eat up, drink up and sit on the couch at night living the vicarious dream. It’s better than nothing.

The problems of obesity and overweight have resulted from decades of media moguls and high-powered advertising agencies “giving the public what they want”; a failure in leadership, both politically and socially and a general immaturity and dumbing down of national debates in both developed and developing countries.

As a physicist, Stephen Hawking can point to the solution and say “it’s not rocket science”. Applying that solution is another matter altogether.