¶ … Obesity Annotated Bibliography for Obesity in Today's Australian Culture and Society

While there are many challenges faced by societies today, one of the major health challenges that every society is facing is that of Obesity. People fail to realize that obesity is a serious problem. To understand what makes obesity a serious problem, it is important to the actual meaning of obesity. While some people refer to obesity as being fat, it is important to know that obesity actually means crossing a body mass index greater than that define for an overweight person. Being obese is basically an indicator that you have entered the red zone of health. Obesity has direct and indirect implications on overall health of an obese person.

The indirect implications include an increase in the likelihood of disease occurrence. Since obesity makes a person less active in his life, the chances are that an obese person's body immunity functions are also lazing around. Also the toxins from the extra fat stored in an obese person results in the increases probability of serious diseases such as heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, asthma, osteoarthritis and etc.

The direct implications of obesity on the health of an obese person are basically emotional and psychological. An obese person is likely to be ridiculed or insulted in the society due to his or her extra weight. While some obese people may give the impression that they are least bothered by the comments of the people, it effects there emotional health greatly. Obese people are likely to have depression and anxiety more than the others. They also experience more mood swings. They can be happy one second and angry the other. Therefore, an emotional imbalance exists in obese people. While this imbalance may exist in normal people as well, but the likelihood of its existence is more in the obese people.

Obese people have to deal with a lot of problems such as lack of acceptance from the society and low self-esteem. These problems actually give rise to the emotional problems that the obese people face. Therefore, it is very difficult for an obese person to survive normally in the world of today. By recognizing the dangers that obesity is putting to the health of obese people, the countries are working towards handling this problem through various ways.

While obesity is a problem for countries all around the world, we are mainly going to focus on obesity in the Australian culture and the society. It is important to know that the weight of a person is strongly affected by a country's culture and society. Genes also play an important role in determining a person's weight. Another important thing to note here is that while genes contribute towards the likelihood of a person being obese, the culture and society affect the obesity factor once a person becomes obese.

The Australian culture is a unique culture that is western in nature. While there are many factors of the Australian culture, we will mostly be focusing on the factors that are affecting obesity. The two factors of the Australian culture that affect obesity are lifestyle and work environment. The culture of Australia promotes an easy going lifestyle. People have freedom to live the way they want and since Australia is a developed country, Australians are hardly concerned about their lifestyle.

The lifestyle prevalent in Australia is very similar to that of the lifestyle prevalent in the overall western society. This lifestyle basically encourages relaxation. People, including adults and youngsters, prefer staying inside their homes and do indoor activities. As a result, outdoor activities and physical exercise have been completely ignored. This very personal lifestyle, results in extra weight gain. When indoor activities are being carried out, people tend to eat more. Extra calories along with lack of exercise contribute strongly to obesity.

Another aspect is the work environment of the Australian people. There nature of jobs that the Australian people have require sitting for long hours, this also limits the physical activity that can be carried out. Therefore the lifestyle factor and the work environment factor of the Australian culture increases the probability of people being obese.

Now that we understand the impact of Australian culture, we need to understand the impact that the Australian society has on the obese people. Like in every other society, obesity is not well received by most of the people. Even though the percentage of obesity is increasing in the Australian society, it is only a fraction of people who are obese. Therefore, the people with normal weight and body mass index have a certain impact on the obese people. The impact that normal people have on...

Most of the people normally harass, ridicule or taunt obese people. This very treatment affects the emotional health of a person suffering from obesity. It is important to understand that obesity is more of a disease than a condition. Therefore, the Australian society at large has a very negative impact on the obese people.
The indirect impact is the way obese people underestimate themselves by idealizing the normal people. The world has defined certain terms for good looks and beauty. Obese people are not a part of that. Although there are efforts such as beauty competition for people that are obese but still all obese people aren't a part of these efforts. By comparing themselves with normal people, they develop extremely low self-esteem. While this may sound as a personal problem for these people, this is affecting the Australian society at large.

The rude attitude towards the obese people is encouraging the society to develop inhuman norms. Apart from that, this attitude results in emotional imbalance for the obese person. Due to this, they lose hope and stop making efforts to address their problems. This ultimately results in affecting the overall health of the society.

Once again we should realize that obesity is not a condition, it is a disease itself. This disease can also be fatal for the Australian culture and society, therefore it is important for the country to take certain measure to control the increasing rate of obesity.

Selected Resources for Annotated Bibliography

The selected academic articles from peer reviewed journals are as mentioned below:

1. Overweight and Obesity in Australia: the 1999-2000 Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study -- A paper from the medical journal of Australia

2. Overweight and Obesity in Australian Mothers: Epidemic or Endemic? - A paper from the medical journal of Australia

3. Overweight, obesity and girth of Australian preschoolers: prevalence and socio-economic correlates -- A paper from the International Journal of Obesity

4. Weight and place: a multilevel cross-sectional survey of area-level social disadvantage and overweight/obesity in Australia - A paper from the International Journal of Obesity

Annotated Bibliography

Overweight and Obesity in Australia: the 1999-2000 Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study -- Annotated Bibliography

This journal article or paper is directly related to our subject of concern as the article was aimed to provide information regarding the existence of obesity in people of Australia who are adults and also aimed at defining the relationship between the lifestyle, the socio economic factors and obesity. The paper was published after a systematic research that involved experimentation on people in the given time period. The sample size for the research was 42 and the sample was randomly selected from different regions (Cameron, et al., 2003).

The research was carried out by examining the sample respondents through various outcomes. Their body mass index and weight was taken under consideration to decide whether the person is obese or not. While the socio demographic factors were taken under consideration to decide whether the lifestyle activities such as smoking, television and physical activities themselves has any impact on the obesity of the person. It also analyzed the kind of lifestyle that an obese person has. This actually helped in determining, what lifestyle activities to avoid in order to avoid obesity.

The results of the research determined that almost 60% of men and women from Australia suffered from Obesity. 60% is a very high percentage. The percentage increased 2.5 times as compared to that in the year 1980. This depicted that there is an alarming increase in the rate of obesity in Australia. Other results included that Australians who were less educated, watched television for longer periods of time and carried out less physical activities, were obese. The research also revealed that television time has stronger impacts on the prevalence of obesity.

The conclusion of the research paper an article is that the rate of obesity has increased more than the double of what it was two decades prior to the year 2000. This is an alarming increasing rate and can have an adverse affect on the overall Australian society. The lifestyle activities of a person play a very important role. If a person watches more television, he or she is likely to be less physically active and eat more. Watching television actually attracts the person towards eating even if he or she is not…