British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is bringing his battle against obesity to Australia, setting up his “Ministry of Food” in the Queensland town of Ipswich, he announced Monday.

Oliver said that diet-related disease was the biggest killer in the country, where two-thirds of men and half of women are estimated to be overweight or obese, according to a Sydney University study.

“Let’s be frank, obesity is killing us,” she told reporters. “This is about educating young Queenslanders about how to prepare nutritious meals and help them lead long, healthy lives.”

AFP: Jamie Oliver brings obesity food fight Down Under

The crisis is now official. Obesity is the leading cause of preventable death in Australia, overtaking smoking. The new findings published this month in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health have escalated the seriousness of obesity in this country.

The study from Western Australia revealed that more than 60 percent of adults and one in four children are overweight or obese. These results are expected to reflect the population across the nation.

Losing Weight to Beat the No. 1 Preventable Disease: Obesity | Health | Epoch Times

According to a new study, fat kids actually eat healthier than their skinny classmates, which has led researchers to believe that the obesity problem has more to do with exercise than junk food.

The Telegraph reports that the study surveyed over 900 kids in Norway, and found that obese children ate fruits, vegetables, low fat cheese and yogurt, and brown breads more often than their skinny counter parts. The study shows that a good diet is not enough to prevent weight gain.

Fat Kids Eat Healthier Than Skinny Kids, New Study Shows – Indyposted

A friend recently visited the show and announced that after years of struggling with her weight she’s decided to have bariatric surgery. It made me sad. I’ve experienced the same ups and downs, but I always believed there was a natural answer for me. It took a while to find that answer, but I did, and I’ve been all the happier for it. My solution came with no anesthesia, no surgery, no hospital stay, no recovery period and no side effects.

I believe what my friend is experiencing is an addiction to food. But instead of treating obesity like an addiction to food, doctors often treat it like a disease.

What health practitioners and others in the field of weight loss all too often fail to address is the patient’s relationship with food. Unlike drugs and alcohol, food is a necessity, and abstaining forever is not an option.

Robin Quivers: Exploring Solutions for Obesity

Fat Thanks to Sunita K. for the tip!

Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.

Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk.

While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Sales of Cheese – NYTimes.com

According to Penn State researchers, restaurants can help tackle the obesity epidemic by creating reduced-calorie meals.

In the survey, 72 percent of the 432 respondents said they could trim off 10 percent of the calories in meals without customers noticing differences in taste, and 21 percent said they could trim off at least 25 percent of the calories.

How chefs can help combat obesity by creating reduced-calorie meals

But I have another idea to add: One hour of mandatory physical exercise for every child, every day they are in public school. Take a walk outside around the school with your class, walk the halls and up and down the stairs if the school doesn’t have a gym, run or walk around the gym if there is one. Every day. One hour a day.

Beating the kid obesity ‘epidemic’: Get them walking

Jennifer O’Dea from the University of Sydney says the rate of childhood obesity among low income families is almost double that seen across middle and high income families.

She says a tax on junk foods as called for by a rising number of health experts, would only place extra financial strain on these families, when a social justice approach is needed.

Sky News: Childhood obesity an ‘exaggeration’

Obesity spreads easily through social networks and friendships, and having just four obese friends can double your own risk of becoming obese, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology by Harvard researchers.

Obesity: Having 4 Overweight Friends Doubles Risk | Health | Epoch Times

The study showed obese people have the potential to create a ripple effect among their non-obese peers, Hill said. That’s because the more non-obese people an obese person comes into contact with, the greater the chance those people will become obese.

Hill and her colleagues based their findings on a model of obesity’s spread through social networks, which was similar to models used to trace the spread of infectious diseases like the flu.

Obesity rate to reach 42 percent, experts predict – Health – Diet and nutrition – msnbc.com

Fat Thanks to Eskinder K. for the tip!