Public health experts have long argued that on the subject of stopping obesity, we want to stop blaming individuals.
Our latest online toolreleased today, confirms we live in an environment where the chances of getting a healthy eating regimen are heavily stacked against us.
Unhealthy foods are available and heavily marketed to us by the food industry. This makes it very easy to over-consume unhealthy foods. It also makes it very difficult to consistently select healthy options.
Our online tool – Australia’s Food Environment Dashboard – brings together the best-available data to explain Australia’s food environments. For the primary time, now we have a transparent picture of the ways the environment drives us to devour an excessive amount of of the flawed varieties of foods.
Supermarkets heavily promote unhealthy food
Australian supermarkets are a key setting during which unhealthy foods are pushed at us.
More than half of the packaged food on Australian supermarket shelves is unhealthy. At end-of-aisle displaysunhealthy products are promoted rather more often than healthier products.
Unhealthy products are also “on special” almost twice as often as healthy foods. What’s more, the discounts on unhealthy foods are much larger than the discounts on healthier foods.
And at checkoutsit’s almost unattainable to pay for groceries without being exposed to unhealthy foods.
All of this intense marketing for unhealthy foods contributes to the unhealthy mixture of products in our supermarket trolleys.
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Children’s exposure to junk food promotion
Australian children cannot escape unhealthy food marketing. As they travel to highschool, and play and watch sport of their communitykids are exposed to a relentless barrage of promotions for unhealthy food and drinks.
When they activate the TV they may see greater than twice as many ads for unhealthy food in comparison with healthy food.
And when kids are on their mobile devicesthey’re hit with as many as ten unhealthy food and drinks ads every hour.
It’s worse in additional disadvantaged areas
Our dashboard shows food environments in disadvantaged areas are less healthy than those in advantaged areas. The cost of a healthy eating regimen is mostly higher in low socioeconomic areas and is far higher in very distant parts of Australia.
Critically, the fee of a healthy eating regimen is just unaffordable (meaning it costs greater than 30% of a household’s income) for people on low incomes and people living in rural or distant areas.
People living in low socioeconomic areas are also exposed to more promotions for unhealthy food. A study in Perth, for instance, found low socioeconomic areas had a significantly higher ratio of unhealthy food ads to healthy ads inside 500m of colleges, in comparison with high socioeconomic areas.
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While just about all the important thing elements of food environments in Australia are currently unhealthy, there are some areas that support health.
Our major supermarkets are leading the best way in displaying the Health Star Rating on their home-brand product labels, which helps consumers make more informed food selections.
Some state governments have shown great progress in creating healthier environments of their hospitals and other health services, by offering water and nuts in vending machines, for instance, somewhat than sugary drinks and lollies.
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Greater monitoring is required
Unhealthy diets and obesity are leading contributors to poor health in Australia. For that reason, it’s critical to closely monitor the important thing drivers of our unhealthy diets.
We’re pretty good at monitoring our exposure to other key health risks and taking public health motion accordingly. For example, the federal government has successfully reduced road fatalities through a spread of measures, including distinguished identification and eradication of traffic “black spots”.
Now we want the identical level of attention paid to our food environments, where there are still some key gaps in our knowledge.
For example, while most state governments have policies to guide foods available in schools, only Western Australia and New South Wales monitors and/or reports adherence to policies.
In many other areas, similar to food promotiondata will not be routinely collected. This means we frequently have to depend on data that’s a couple of years old and that may only be relevant to small geographic regions.
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Governments have to take stronger motion
The unhealthy state of our food environments indicates much stronger policy motion is required from all levels of presidency in Australia.
The National Obesity Strategy which is currently in development and now overdue, can provide the framework for Australian governments to repair up the “black spots” in our food environment.
Improvements could be made by introducing globally beneficial policies, similar to taxes on sugary drinks and higher standards for the way the food industry markets its unhealthy food and drinks products.
These actions can assist ensure all Australians have access to food environments that support healthy diets.