Australia is fast becoming the unlucky country.

The average person lives a sedentary lifestyle and consumes generous amounts of food. Few people recognise they are overweight, unfit and unhealthy. The majority of Australians refuse to check our weight and only a tiny proportion can run a reasonable distance such as 10km quickly. Australians accept the onset of health issues such as hypertension, diabetes and dementia as something that occurs with age. 

This is not a phenomenon specific to Australia.

Obesity is rising rapidly worldwide. The WHO has described obesity as a "worldwide epidemic" and recently it was claimed that Australians are the most obese people in the world. While that may or may not be true we do know that 60% of the adult population in Australia is overweight or obese. The prevalence of obesity in Australia is 2.5 times higher now than it was in 1980. Children are not immune.

The cause is an imbalance between the food we eat and the exercise we do.