Australian Medical Association

MJA release - A quarter of secondary school students are overweight or obese, and lifestyle and socioeconomic status are implicated, according to research published in the 20 February issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.

It is difficult for Australian families to find the right information they need to make healthy choices about the food they consume. The AMA believes that a system of Traffic Light labelling on food products can provide easy to understand nutritional information for people to make those choices. This AMA paper publication details the evidence for a Traffic Light system of labelling and its advantages compared to alternative approaches.

It is difficult for Australian families to find the right information they need to make healthy choices about the food they consume. This AMA publication outlines the case for a Traffic Light system of labelling on food products to ensure that consumers can easily recognise and compare the healthiness of food products.

MJA release - Weight loss programs have a high long-term failure rate because once people become obese, their bodies are programmed to regain any weight that they manage to lose, according to an article in the Medical Journal of Australia.

New research shows that self-regulation has failed dismally in reducing junk food advertising during children’s television viewing times.

After nearly two years of self-regulation by the fast food industry, children’s exposure to junk food advertising is unchanged.

AMA Vice President, Professor Geoffrey Dobb, said today that junk food advertising to kids must be banned through Government regulation because the industry has not been effective in regulating itself.

MJA release - Deaths from pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) are on the rise and may be linked to obesity, according to a letter to the editor in the latest Medical Journal of Australia.

Professor of Pathology at the University of Adelaide Roger Byard and his co-author said that while attention is often focused on complications of obesity such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cardiac disease, there is also a link to PTE.

AMA Vice President, Dr Steve Hambleton, said today that the AMA strongly supports a ban on the broadcast advertising of junk food to children, particularly during children’s television times.

MJA media release - The worsening severity in sleep-disordered breathing is primarily attributable to increases in obesity, according to a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Dr Jeffery Pretto, Stephen Gyulay and Professor Michael Hensley, from the Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at the John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, and School of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Newcastle, conducted a study aimed at describing trends in sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) severity and whether incidences and severity changed in the Hunter New England region between 1987 and 2007.

Dr Jeffery Pretto said that between 1987 and 2007, 14,648 new diagnostic sleep studies were performed.

MJA media release - Obese and morbidly obese patients are at significantly greater risk of complications after a total hip reconstruction than non-obese patients, according to research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Prof Peter Choong, Director of the Department of Orthopaedics at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, and co-authors conducted a prospective study of 471 patients who underwent total hip arthroplasty (THA) between 2006 and 2007.

They found that the risk of complications in the first 12 months after THA increased by seven per cent for each unit increase in body mass index (BMI), after adjusting for age and sex, with morbidly obese patients having an almost sixfold higher complication rate than non-obese patients.

This position statement outlines the measures the AMA considers appropriate for the prevention and treatment of obesity in Australia.