“Federal Government cracks downs on weight-loss industry.”

That was the amazing headline I saw on News.com.au today. I nearly fell off my chair.

WEIGHT-LOSS programs and products will have to prove they can help people keep off the kilos long-term as the Federal Government cracks down on the $414-million-a-year industry.

The Rudd Government’s Preventative Health Taskforce is understood to have called for the weight-loss industry to be regulated in a report handed down last month.

I’ve blogged about (some not so great) recommendations made by the Preventative Health Taskforce before.

The Taskforce provided the National Preventative Health Strategy to the Government on 30 June 2009 and the Australian Government has been sitting on it ever since. This happens a lot with reports written by external Taskforces or Advisory Panels – they are submitted to the government (federal or state) and then various Ministers sit on them for months. There’s no indication when the Strategy will be released publicly.

It follows growing evidence that diets may actually be adding to the obesity crisis as overweight people lose weight rapidly while following programs but quickly put it back on after they stop.

 Amazing, right?

The taskforce said that young women in particular were spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on programs to manage their weight.

Despite this, the nation’s obesity rate was climbing with more than 60 per cent of adults now overweight or obese.

Not only that…

 The Dietitians Association of Australia is backing the recommendation.

O RLY?!

The association said regulation should require businesses marketing a diet program to provide evidence to a panel of experts showing what percentage of those who used the diet kept the weight off two years after starting.

Chief executive Claire Hewat said a good diet would result in weight loss of about half a kilogram per week.

“If you can lose 5 per cent of your body weight you are doing really well,” she said. “Diets are not the point, it’s lifestyle change that is needed.”

Then the article puts the boot to the diet industry:

A Choice survey of pharmacy diet programs published earlier this year found they were successful at helping people shed kilos in a hurry if followed closely - but they did little to change a person’s lifestyle in the long term.

Many were so nutritionally deficient that dieters had to take vitamin supplements, while some counsellors selling the programs had just three hours training.

And then, of course, the Dietitians Association of Australia has to ruin everything with:

The association also wants national exercise guidelines reviewed because the 30 minutes of exercise a day promoted by the Government is good for general wellbeing but not enough to tackle obesity. 

 Let’s break that down.

Thirty minutes of exercise a day is good for general health, but won’t “tackle obesity”.

General health means nothing if you are still fat.

After the Chief Executive Officer of the DAA explicitly said “Diets are not the point, it’s lifestyle change that is needed”, the Association still believes that one’s fat – rather than one’s lifestyle – is at the root of all our problems.

How can that make sense to ANYONE?!

Alas. We were so close, so tantalising close to a mainstream Australian article espousing health at every size…

“Obese could be paid to lose weight under Rudd proposal”

I want to address the articles that were published yesterday by News Limited: one in The Daily Telegraph/AdelaideNow and one in Herald Sun.

Some clarification for international readers: News Limited is the media company owned by Rupert Murdoch. In Australia it operates, among many others, the Daily Tele, AdelaideNow and the Herald Sun – all tabloid newspapers. Their equivalent in tone and style would be UK’s The Sun (but with fewer boobs), which is also owned by Murdoch. ‘Rudd’ refers to the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

The articles had two different tones. Daily Tele/AdelaideNow ran the headline “Subsidies for people to lose weight and get fit: Overweight people could be paid to lose weight under a radical plan to combat the nation’s obesity crisis” while Herald Sun ran the much more alarmist “Obese could be paid to lose weight under Rudd proposal: Fat people could be paid to lose weight under a radical plan to combat the nation’s obesity crisis commissioned by the Rudd Government”.

The articles led to predictable responses from both sides. The anti-fat brigade exclaimed that Kevin Rudd was rewarding obesity (obesity = evil, natch), discriminating against healthy people, that they should not expected to pay for the problems fat people bring on themselves. On the other side, fatties were blasting Rudd for failing to recognise health at every size.

When I saw the headlines, I expected to jump on the side of the latter. Until I actually read the article. Now I am convinced that the ‘FATTIES = BAD’ tone is more due to dodgy reporting rather than a fault with Rudd or within the actual report.

Not one of the expected recommendations is explicitly targeted at the obese and backs up these ridiculous headlines. The articles outline:

• Tax breaks or subsidies for gym membership, fitness equipment and/or sports club membership
• A ban on junk food advertising during children’s programs
• Nutritional information displays for fast food outlets
• Increasing the cost of cigarettes
• Restrictions on opening times for venues serving alcohol

Leaving aside whether these measures will even be effective, all the recommendations listed in the articles stand to affect everyone.

The most disappointing thing about the Taskforce is that one of the goals they have set is to ”curb the nation’s growing waistline.”

Though the attitude that obesity automatically equates to unhealthiness is frustrating, I don’t blame Kevin Rudd and I am not worried that this will be entered into policy. Rudd commissioned a report from an independent taskforce who will make a series of recommendations that the government is under no obligation to implement. I think that, for now, the fatties are safe from the Australian Government.

Edit: The ABC also covered this story. Apparently one of the recommendations could be that “overweight people would be given subsidies for gym membership or fitness equipment”, which was not explicitly outlined in the News Limited articles. Sigh. The National Preventative Health Taskforce was due to report on their recommendations this week but so far nothing has been released. Watch this space.