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Dying for another snack

By Miranda Devine
May 30, 2004

When a three-year-old girl who weighs 40 kilograms dies of heart failure brought on by obesity, you know her parents are guilty of gross child abuse.

Scant detail was reported last week about the dead girl except that she lived in east London, was described by the Daily Mail as Bengali and weighed almost three times more than a normal three-year-old.

"It was a shocking case," Dr Nigel Meadows, a pediatrician at the Royal London Hospital, told the newspaper. "You don't imagine your kid is just going to die of obesity. The parents were devastated. Some may say the parents are responsible, but if a child is demanding food it can be very difficult to refuse it."

Really, how difficult can it be to stop a three-year-old from overeating? There is no excuse for toddlers to be obese. Parents exercise complete control over the child's access to food and physical activity. The only way a three-year-old could balloon out to 40 kilograms is if her parents have filled her mouth with excess calories her entire life.

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The case has convulsed England, where a parliamentary committee has called for a ban on junk food advertising on TV and doctors tell of children so fat they need ventilators at night for sleep apnoea because they're "choking on their own fat".

In the US, at least, welfare authorities have acknowledged that parents of such children are incompetent. In a much-publicised case in 2000, three-year-old Anamarie Martinez-Regino, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who weighed 50 kilograms, was removed, kicking and screaming, from her parents because they wouldn't control her weight and put in foster care.

Childhood obesity is a global crisis, says a report released on Friday by a group of researchers called the International Obesity Taskforce. It says 10 per cent (155 million) of the world's school-age children are overweight and 2-3 per cent of those are obese. One graph shows that the prevalence of overweight and obese 10-year-olds in Australia is approaching 30 per cent, placing us fifth in the world after Malta, Italy, the US and Chile, with the problem worse in boys than girls.

The figures accord with a 2002 report by the NSW Childhood Obesity Secretariat which found that more than one in five children here is overweight and getting fatter at a rate higher than almost anywhere else in the world.

The number of obese Australian children more than tripled between 1985 and 1995. Dubbed Generation O, they're condemned to diabetes, premature puberty, gallstones, sleep apnoea, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and ridiculously premature death. A Royal Prince Alfred Hospital study published last month found overweight children as young as nine were at risk of heart attack and stroke from diseased arteries and blood vessels. The arteries of some overweight children had thickened as much as those of heavy adult smokers.

Smug Sydneysiders like to tell stories about the grossly fat Americans they have seen on their travels who take up two seats on planes, need reinforced toilet seats and eat super size fries and two hot dogs at once. But we are just as bad.

You can't buy petrol without having a king-size Snickers bar shoved in your face at the register, or two, actually, since there is usually a two-for-one deal. Go into a 7-Eleven store to buy a Coke and you will be encouraged to get the bigger bottle, "because it's cheaper". How does that work?

As if pizzas weren't fattening enough, Pizza Hut has devised a way of inserting cheese, and even chocolate, into the crust. Where once you could find the odd muesli bar in the school lunch aisle at the supermarket, now there is a glut of rice bubble snacks, breakfast bars, chocolate-coated "fruit" substitutes and bakery treats, down to individually wrapped everlasting Finding Nemo chocolate cakes with custard filling.

We sound alarm bells about anorexia at the sight of a supermodel collarbone, but we are so comfortable with obesity that when a critically ill 300-kilogram man had to be lifted out of his third-floor flat at Waterloo with a cherry picker it barely rated a mention. Andrew Raymond, reported to be in his 30s, died in RPA Hospital on March 25, the day after dozens of emergency workers took more than four hours to remove windows and extract him from the Housing Commission flat he shared with his mother. A neighbour told reporters Raymond, a former taxidriver, wanted to be a footballer when he was a little boy, but "he got too big".

His tragedy will be repeated ad nauseam in coming generations if parents continue to overindulge their increasingly greedy children.

Willie's soft side, by fans

Bulldogs rugby league forward Willie Mason turned on a winning performance at the State of Origin match on Wednesday night, despite the demoralising boos from the crowd.

But he still has plenty of fans, judging by the reaction to a column I wrote last week pointing out he had been unjustly blamed for recent league scandals. Emails flooded in from people who had observed his gentleness with children when signing autographs, or who had met him and found him polite and respectful.

A 21-year-old woman who met him at a Sutherland Shire nightclub described him as "cool, not stuck-up and a fun guy", unlike other players.

Melissa, who went to primary and high school with Mason at Toronto, near Newcastle, wrote: "What I remember best of Will and his larger brother Les is that, although they looked tough as nails, they were never the bullies. They were the people who, with little more than a look, stopped other people from bullying. They are boys brought up with respect for women and the kind of strength that isn't measured by the size of a man's biceps, but by the size of his heart."

Her best memory is of working backstage at a school rock eisteddfod. "The sets were too heavy for my weak teenage girl's arms, and without my even asking Will took it upon himself to carry my sets onstage and offstage, as well as his own."

Mason has been subjected to a vicious rumour campaign with more than a hint of racism. But no spin doctor could invent the glowing references that filled my email tray last week.

Trish needs to take a tip from Natasha

Why should taxpayers pay for politicians to take travelling companions on trips overseas, whether husbands, wives, lovers or one-night stands?

The revelation that Liberal MP Trish Draper took short-term boyfriends on "study" jaunts to Europe and China shows just how rotten the parliamentary perks system is, and how removed politicians are from the real world. In the real world, companies don't fly all their executives first class. In the real world, if you are on a business trip to Paris and you want to take your husband, you don't expect your company to pay.

Most people would take their work-funded business-class fare and split it into two economy tickets. To her credit, that's what Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja did, said her former boyfriend, Channel Nine newsreader Hugh Riminton, who travelled with her to Europe in 2000.

He said last week she downgraded her flight from business class to get him a ticket, and he contributed $1000 to upgrade to double hotel rooms.

It says a lot for both of them that they resisted the pressure that must exist in Canberra to freeload beyond any normal ethical boundary.