Poverty is associated with a great number of health problems. One relatively recent health crisis largely attributed to poverty is obesity. According to the World Health Organisation, obesity rates have…
Refugees settling in Australia constantly face new challenges. They have to re-adjust to new income levels, cultural practices and language. They also face a new food environment, where many traditional…
Over the past three decades, the Australasia region has outpaced other regions of the world with the largest absolute increase in adult obesity. Poor diet and high body mass index have overtaken tobacco…
I run 50km per week on my treadmill and eat a calorie-restricted diet; this is something our ancestors didn’t have to do. But then they didn’t sit at a desk all day and certainly did not have access to…
Science has a simple and incredible trick that will help you lose weight. The idea, it seems, is to make portions appear bigger because this leads people to serve and eat less. While many such fat-fighting…
If we could go back 100 years in a time machine, what would kids be like? They’d be shorter, leaner, probably dirtier and less well-fed — but would they be fitter? It turns out we actually have a beautiful…
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Non-communicable diseases that you can’t catch from someone else such as stroke, high blood pressure and cancer, account for 36.1m deaths worldwide. Put it another way, this is about 63% of all deaths…
Liver cancer is one of the most deadly diseases in the world with around 700,000 patients being diagnosed and more than 600,000 patients dying of the disease annually, according to the American Cancer…
Want to stack the nutrition odds in your favour? The key is good food so here are five things to never let into your shopping trolley: lollies, biscuits, sugar-sweetened drinks, potato crisps and processed…
Rats are very useful for studying human eating behaviour. Both rats and humans are omnivores, and both use flavour conditioning – learning through taste and experience which foods are good to eat and which…
We’ve all heard those phrases that denote a certain blindness to the passage of time. “She looks as young as the day I met her” husbands say of their wives 50 years into married life, or “haven’t they…
Almost two-thirds of Australian adults and one in four children are overweight or obese. Excess weight is responsible for 7,200 deaths each year in Australia, as well one in five heart attacks, half of…
Supermodel Kate Moss’ quip that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” captured the sense in society that being thin is the recipe for happiness. Obesity causes a range of health problems, including…
Hollywood makes films that excite and exhilarate; films that make us laugh, cry, connect with humanity – and above all make box office bucks along the way. While most of us would happily say we were going…
If you’re an adult and live in Australia, you’re more likely to be overweight or obese than not: 63% and 37% respectively. This excess weight is associated with increased premature death and disease, and…
We’ve recently seen some encouraging improvements in closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage: better educational outcomes, higher child immunisation rates, more health checks, and a 35% drop in the…
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand