The intergenerational cultural, socio-economic and political impact of Australia's colonisation have led to poor nutrition and health including the forced removal of Aboriginal people from traditional lands and a resultant inability to access traditional food sources as Aboriginal people became more urbanised, were ...
The factors contributing to the persisting growth deficiencies of many Aboriginal children are complex, but the most important are likely to be 'persistently negative' environmental factors – living in overcrowded, relatively unhygienic conditions, with poor food supply, repeated infections and poor nutrition [11, 12, ...
Important determinants of Indigenous health inequality in Australia include the lack of equal access to primary health care and the lower standard of health infrastructure in Indigenous communities (healthy housing, food, sanitation etc) compared to other Australians.
Due to differences in body proportion, BMI may not describe the same degree of unhealthy weight in populations other than Caucasian.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians
According to the latest data from the 2018–19 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey, 38% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and adolescents aged 2–17 were overweight or obese.
Obesity is also more common in older age groups – 18% of men and 14% of women aged 18–24 year are living with obesity, compared with 42% of men and 39% of women aged 65–74 (Figure 2).
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the most obese countries are primarily located in the Pacific and the Middle East. The Pacific island nations of Nauru, Cook Islands, and Palau have the highest rates of obesity, with over 30% of their populations being classified as obese.
Factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, and muscle mass can influence the relationship between BMI and body fat. Also, BMI does not distinguish between excess fat, muscle, or bone mass, nor does it provide any indication of the distribution of fat among individuals.
Body Mass Index' biggest flaw is that it does not take into account the person's body fat versus muscle (lean tissue) content. Muscle weighs more than fat (it is denser, a cubic inch of muscle weighs more than a cubic inch of fat).
BMI is also not reliable to use on elderly adults, who generally have lost some amount of muscle and bone mass. In this case, an elderly person's BMI could be within a normal range while they might actually be overweight.
Based on age-standardised rates, circulatory diseases accounted for the largest gap in mortality rates between Indigenous and non‑Indigenous Australians (gap of 78 deaths per 100,000 population).
Aboriginal people drink less than white people. Many Australian health surveys have shown that most Aboriginal people are less likely than non-Aboriginal Australians to consume alcohol, a trait they share with indigenous peoples in Canada and New Zealand.
Between 2014–15 and 2018–19, after adjusting for inflation, the median gross weekly personal income for Indigenous Australians aged 18 and over fell by 5.6%, from $518 to $489 (Figure 1).
Aboriginal people ate a large variety of plant foods such as fruits, nuts, roots, vegetables, grasses and seeds, as well as different meats such as kangaroos, 'porcupine'7, emus, possums, goannas, turtles, shellfish and fish.
Coronary heart disease, diabetes, chronic lower respiratory diseases and lung and related cancers are the main causes of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
How muscular you are: A few people have high BMIs but don't have much body fat. Their muscle tissue pushes up their weight. An example: "A football player or a body builder who is very muscular. Their BMI shows up pretty high, and yet their body fat is actually pretty low," Kahan says.
BMI doesn't account for body composition, which means it misses the difference between muscle mass and fat. Because muscles are more dense and heavier than fat, bodybuilders and other professional athletes like football players are often considered obese or overweight based on their BMI alone.
For its inventor, the BMI was a way of measuring populations, not individuals — and it was designed for the purposes of statistics, not individual health.
Scientists say waist-to-hip ratio better measure for healthy weight than BMI.
Body Mass Index Is a Good Gauge of Body Fat
The most basic definition of overweight and obesity is having too much body fat-so much so that it “presents a risk to health.” (1) A reliable way to determine whether a person has too much body fat is to calculate the ratio of their weight to their height squared.
Media Release - 16 November 2020
Aussie men are the second most obese in OECD countries - Aussie men have the second highest rates of obesity (32%) among 23 OECD countries, behind the USA (38%). Aussie women fared better than men but are still obese at a higher rate than the OECD average.
Nutrient transmission (change in diet) is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic in the Pacific Islands, with a high amount of imported foods high in salt and fat content grow.