Australia is a fat country. This is a broad sweeping generalization but an observation I'm qualified to make. Because I'm Australian. I only visit for a couple of weeks a year and every time I do I can't help noticing how fat everyone is. This includes my family (not my 84 year old mom). It's ironic, as on the one hand Aussies are sports mad, but as soon as they put down the ball, racquet, club, bat, rod or what ever other weapon is their choice, they grab a six pack of beer and consume fried food!
The big topic of conversation on Australian media recently is the sky rocketing price of fuel. From what I understand this is directly related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now forgive my skepticism but I think the conflict is being used as a very convenient excuse to put the price of fuel up. How is it that two weeks after the invasion, fuel in Australia has gone up close to 30%. I'm calling bullshit! So where am I going with this......?
On the radio this morning I was listening to a talk show where listeners could call in and have their 2 minutes. One lady was explaining that she had just filled her car up on the way to work and it cost exceptionally more than the last fill. The DJ asked her how far was the commute. 10km was her answer. The next question was of course "have you considered cycling to work?" The long silent pause was deafening. She had no answer.
I mean cmon lady - this city has a comprehensive network of cycle paths that connect every suburb radiating out from the centre of the city in every direction. OK so maybe she has a good reason to drive her gas guzzling car 10km to work and back every day. So I thought I would see just how good these cycle paths are. My family home is 30km from the center of the city. Now of course that is a hell of a cycle commute but I wanted to see how many cyclists were on the bike path at different stages of the journey.
Off I set. I posted a couple of weeks ago about the MBC - the name of the cycle path that connects my family home of Redcliffe to the Brisbane city center. I wanted to continue beyond where I turned back that day and follow it all the way to the city. I cant tell you how awesome these bike paths are. They are built alongside the main arterial roads that connect the outer suburbs with the center of the city. They follow green areas, river banks, are elevated through wetlands and dive under highways in specially built tunnels. Guess how many cyclists I passed on this fine Monday morning as I rode to the city. One. I'm not kidding, I passed one cyclist in 90 minutes of leisurely cycling over 39km of perfect bike paths.
And the best thing is.... you can take your bike on the train for free. Which was perfect for me as I simply caught the train home rather than riding all the way back. Once again I was the only guy on the train with a bike. Cmon fat Australia - get on your bicycle.
Fuel costs a fortune, everyone is fat, the whole city is connected with cycle paths. People complain about lack of parking, expensive public transport and high costs of running a car. I dont know what to say.
I'm Jobiker and I would ride to work every day if I lived here. But thankfully I dont...:) Peace.
Yeah, no different on this side of the world either I'm afraid.
I shop at the budget supermarket in my town and I'd say I must be half the weight of most people in there and I'm 185 cm tall! It does sell fruit fruit and veg as well but must people just head straight to the freezer aisles...
I commute to work on bike and train, I never drive. Train ticket prices just went up 0.2% so relatively speaking they are a snip compared to the increase in fuel costs. In fact, ever since Covid-19 hit and I'm no longer required to be in the office every day, I reckon I'm about £400 a year better off on my commuting costs.
The other thing that gets me is the number of people who drive their kids to school. I walk both my boys to different local schools every morning. We live in a suburban town so the catchment area for both schools is pretty small meaning no one can possibly be living more than about 1km from the school itself. How can you justify driving that? Beyond the cost is the environmental impact both globally and locally, the danger it causes on the road and of course the missed opportunity for some gentle exercise. If it was up to me, it'd be residents parking only everywhere within at least a 300 metre radius of the school.
Seems the whole world is getting fat! In Thailand where I live there has been a massive increase in fat kids. I put it down to uneducated parents that see no harm in feeding their kids garbage from the 711 and other fast food chains - 1 generation ago these crappy outlets didn't exist in the huge numbers they do today. I see school kids eating this crap every day.
Here in Australia and I guess in UK we dont have the fine food culture of say France or Italy so people just eat in a very "fast food" style. Sadly cheap food is fat food and fatness is most noticeable in the lower end of the socio economic scale.
Glad to hear my sentiments are agreed with @talesfrmthecrypt - i think we would get along just fine!
The world is getting fatter and it is all down to convenience food. The problem is the last generation and this one cannot cook and only know the microwave or deep fat fryer. Shame really as grannys old recipes are being lost forever.
We were in the States a while back and I have heard about how obese they are and didn't realise how bad things were. I can only imagine what the population around the world will look like in 20 years from now.
As you say - convenience food is the culprit. Nobody knows how to prepare a healthy meal anymore from actual fresh ingredients. My niece is 28 years old and weighs a 100kg - she lives on fast food delivered by fat people in small cars - they call it Ubereats. Poison on wheels. Makes me sad. I told her I rode in to the city - she couldn't even start to comprehend how that was possible or why I would do it.
It's so crazy. I remember I drove in to a few NSW country towns for work some years back and it absolutely baffled me that a small town could sustain a KFC or a McDonalds! Socio-economic factors would make it hard for those battlers to eat anything else BUT Kfry or Micky D's.
Yeah small town Australia is somewhere I avoid but my recent trip to Mackay was exactly as you describe. I asked my sis if there was any nice restaurants to eat at..... we ended up at the yacht club eating fried food...:( It seems healthy food is just a weird fad that is only found in the big city.
Maybe people need to watch the food they eat and when they eat. All of these constitute one being far or having a normal weight. An increase in petrol price seems to be everywhere; the same issue seems over here. Too bad, I can't ride bicycle🤡
For real! Diet is very important and for me I just dont get why it's so hard to not eat crap for the average Australian. I mean if I go a few meals in a row without some fresh fruit or veg my body craves it. Great thing about living in Asia is you dont even have to search for that - its everywhere and cheap and part of every street meal.
I think if Australians are being enlightened more about the effects of junk food or poor dieting, it will help to reduce how obese people get to be.
Yep, same thing here in Ireland. People are time poor and turn to convenience food from packets, cans and tins - processed shite. For me the saddest thing is always seeing Obesity in young children who have no control over it and are being set up for a harder life than if they weren't obese. Let's not bullshit anyone, life is easier if your BMI is in check. I think technology is the other factor here as well, with people's obsession with screens and a more sedentary lifestyle.
There was a time when this was an American epidemic, but it's now worldwide, but only the more Western countries. People need to get back to whole foods and "Granny's recipes" as @cryptoandcoffee suggests
Yes! Its just sad that now in many western countries its actually a mission to eat healthy. All the restaurants serve fat food, takeaway is garbage and our kids are fed crap at school. God help us.
I remember reading not that long ago that there is a competition that people really shouldn't want to win between Australia, USA, and Mexico every year about which country is the fattest. I don't know who pulled gold in the last year but 71% of the population being overweight? That's effin crazy.
yeah - 7 out of 10 people here are fat. LOL thats crazy. It's especially more noticeable in low income areas. Education is a pert of it and often people are just without a chance - if you grow up eating crap from your parents then you are basically doomed to be fat and unhealthy. Also social media puts ridiculous pressure on kids to have some stupid super body from being a gym freak. What an earth happened to healthy and healthy normal lifestyle?? When did riding ur bike to school or work become weird??
I think when the world became extremely paranoid. I rode my bike to school for what seems like my entire childhood and prior to that I walked with my siblings. Was the world a safer place back then? I think it probably had the same amount of pedos and potential kidnappers that exist today.
It had to be a bitterly cold day for us to get a ride in the car and this was rare. Also, almost all of my friends in elementary and high school rode bikes to school as well and spent the afternoons riding around looking for their friends so they could start up some sort of sport. I think we can at least in part blame technology because when I was a kid we didn't have very much of that and even the video games we had were not anywhere near as interesting as going outside.
I don't think it is our imaginations when we think / see that the younger generation is a lot fatter than previous ones. It's only going to get worse too.
Yeah I have to agree with you - video games have had a detrimental affect on kids childhood as well as everything digital. I was heartened to see on my recent trip to suburban Australia that the kids on mom's street still played cricket on the road just like when I was a kid - but this is certainly not the "norm"