Aug 14, 2006, 9:43 GMT
Sydney - Closing down chip shops, burger bars and pizza parlours wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to childhood obesity levels, says top Australian government scientist Peter Clifton.
'The problem is greater than just fast-foods and restaurants,' he told a parliamentary inquiry into a trend that has seen the proportion of fat kids triple in just 10 years.
Clifton, co-author of best-selling, The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet, says parents are the villains rather than the retailers.
Supermarket shelves are chock-a-block with crisps, biscuits, muesli bars and other high-energy, high-fat sources of food because that's what parents put in their children's lunchboxes. It's the demand that creates the supply.
Clifton exonerated school tuckshops, pointing to research showing that of the 37 per cent of daily energy intake at school, only 14 per cent was bought on school premises, the remainder being carted to school by children in lunchboxes packed by their parents.
Clifton told parliament that higher energy intake rather than lower energy expenditure was what was behind the average 12-year-old Australian boy being 25 per cent fatter than his counterpart in 1970.
Not that manufacturers couldn't help out by marketing low-calorie versions of their top-selling soft drinks, muesli bars, crisps and biscuits.
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