It's a fact. Australians are getting fatter.
The latest research from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has found nearly 70 per cent of people living in the Hunter New England and Central Coast health regions are classified as being overweight or obese.
The figure is above the national average of 63 per cent. Put another way, 1 in 3 adults are overweight and not obese, and 1 in 4 adults are obese.
Nutrition and dietetics professor Clare Collins from the University of Newcastle said there is a difference between being obese and being overweight based on your Body Mass Index (BMI), but either way it's not good.
"Essentially the higher your BMI, the more likely it is that you're carrying excess body fat particularly around your waist and around your body organs and its that type of excess body fat that's related to higher risks of diabetes, heart disease and some cancers."
The statistics also look at overweight and obesity in children and show 1 in 4 Australian children and adolescents aged between 2 - 17 years old were overweight or obese.
Professor Clare Collins said the statistics are alarming and it should be a wake up call for more to be done to stop the statistics going up even more.
"These statistics are alarming, they're continuing to go up; it tells you that we're not doing enough to change the food environment so that basically its better for your health and your hip pocket to eat more healthily,"
"It needs to be a call to action that we change the food environment, that we work together across all sectors so the health and wellbeing of people here in the Hunter and the central coast is the thing that drives us to making it better," said Claire.
