TOO much food, too much TV, too much time in front of the computer, too much time sitting in a car commuting, too little exercise. Add it all up and what do you get? Fat man!
Sixty percent of Australian adults and 25 percent of Australian kids are overweight. Twenty-six percent are classified as obese.
These are startling indicators of an alarming trend.
Every year, instead of getting better and better, we are getting bigger and bigger.
And while our waistlines are expanding, our health issues are expanding too.
Hypertension, stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, arteriosclerosis all of these are in epidemic proportions in our community, and most are the direct result of our weight.
The World Health Organisation defines obesity in terms of body mass index (BMI), which is a measure derived from dividing body weight in kilograms by the square of height in metres.
A person with an index between 18.5 and 25 is regarded as being of normal weight. Those between 25 and 30 are regarded as overweight, and obesity is defined as a BMI equal to, or greater than 30.
In 1990, approximately 3.8 percent of Australians or 650,000 people suffered from diabetes, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. By 2000 this figure had grown to 900,000. In two short years it is estimated 1.15 million Australians will be diabetic.
Juvenile diabetes (type 1), or insulin-dependent diabetes (an auto-immune disease which usually affects young people), ranks as one of the most common serious childhood diseases. It is more likely in people aged under 20 than cancer, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and muscular dystrophy.
Australia has high rates of type 1 diabetes compared with most other countries.
Females with type 1 diabetes have 10 times the rates of cardiovascular mortality compared with non-diabetic females.
Aborigines suffer the fourth-highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the world.
The incidence of diabetes in pregnancy is increasing, particularly in ethnic populations.
The total cost of diabetes probably exceeds $1 billion annually (or about $2800 per diagnosed case).
Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in Australia.
Thirty-six percent of Australians will die from heart disease, which is also a leading cause of disability.
Heart disease treatment accounts for 11 percent of money allocated to the national health system.
Stroke is the third leading cause of death in Australia.
Hypertension is the most common of all cardiovascular conditions and the most common problem managed by general practitioners.
Twenty percent of Australians have hypertension, or high blood pressure, but that rises to 76 percent for people with heart disease.
Yet all these lethal diseases can be stopped in their tracks by good diet and reasonable amounts of exercise.