“Since around the 1950s, cities around the world started to move away from traditional and walkable planning towards more car-oriented urban design. City sprawled into suburbs, facilities have become further away, and highways separated neighbourhoods,” she explains.
Suddenly, activities we didn’t used to think twice about – like walking to the shops – were engineered out of our life. Today, less than 30 per cent of us meet the physical activity guidelines, and many spend most of the day seated.
We shouldn’t need studies to tell us to eat fruits and vegetables – but here we are. Credit:iStock
Of course, our food environment has changed, too. Public health nutritionist Rosemary Stanton explains: “Back in the 1960s we had between 600 to 800 foods to choose from. Now there are well over 50,000, with the average supermarket stocking at least 30,000.”
Special occasion foods became everyday foods and now make up a significant portion of our diet (about 40 per cent of the daily energy intake of Australian adults comes from ultra-processed foods).
Today, we have to think hard about, and often pay for the privilege of, physical activity, and we have to actively fight against the aggressive marketing and availability of foods that make us sick.
“Our health is directly influenced by factors outside of our control,” says public health doctor and CEO of VicHealth, Dr Sandro Demaio. “This includes from the environment around us as companies and businesses market and sell their products using predatory dark marketing tactics online.”
Financial stress and the pace of life amplify the problems and make us more susceptible to the tactics, as paying for fresh food or a gym membership are likely to be among the first “luxuries” to go.
We have to rail against the life we’re being served until government bodies step in to support everyone to live in the way nature intended.
Though the new studies demonstrate how far the pendulum has swung from how we were made to be, it’s not all sad, and it’s not all lost.
We now know the cost of convenience.
Sadly, we have to rail against the life we’re being served until government bodies step in to support everyone to live in the way nature intended.
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Though change is slow, there are shifts that suggest we can swing the pendulum back. “The current federal government is committed to establishing more effort in preventive health. That gives me some hope,” Stanton says. “There is also an inaugural meeting of Parliamentary Friends of Nutrition [this week].
“A really bright spot is in schools which have a kitchen garden program,” she adds. “Many studies show the best way to encourage children to eat vegetables is for them to have a role in growing and picking them from either a home, school or community garden.”
She also points to an upturn in sales of bicycles and greater interest in bike paths: “That’s a good start, but will require government interventions for bike paths. Walk-to-school groups are making some noise and have potential to make walking ‘normal’.”
A walkable environment might also prompt us to shop differently, adds Ding: “Walking to local shops and buying fresh, rather than driving to supermarkets once a week, will hopefully lead to eating better. It will also open up opportunities for social interactions and potentially reduce social isolation.”
Currently, planning laws don’t factor in good health, adds Demaio, which results in the proliferation of junk food outlets, especially in rural towns: “We need to reshape our neighbourhoods to be places that promote good health.”
And, he says: “Higher standards are needed for how companies market and sell harmful products, so we need to revolutionise the way we buy, grow and share food so that everyone has access to healthy, affordable food to feed their families.”
Websites like the University of Newcastle dietitian Clare Collins’ No Money, No Time provide ideas and advice to help people buy and prepare food in a cost-effective, time-effective way.
And though change is hard, we now also know, through the same, sad studies, that very small changes to the way we live can make a big difference to our health and overall wellbeing.
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