The obesity epidemic is more complicated than the London Underground, sugar is like Darth Vader and should be outlawed, and children as young as 11 should be allowed to have weight loss surgery.

These were some of the views expressed by Australian physicians at a conference in Brisbane, where the nation’s burgeoning waistline was high on the agenda.

Professor of endocrinology John Prins said legislation is, however, “probably” necessary.

“You don’t think it will work? Think pool fences, seatbelts etc,” he told colleagues at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetist annual scientific meeting in Brisbane on Sunday.

“Everybody knows it probably should be done, nobody knows how to do it, I certainly don’t and no government is going to rush into it,” he said.

But slapping a tax on sugary drinks and junk food is too “simplistic”, Professor Prins said.

The biggest risk of any legislation, he said, is causing personal offence to a person’s right to choose.

“Some people are just quite happy being fat and don’t want anybody to legislate,” Professor Prins said.

That wasn’t the only controversial advice.

Pre-teenage children should be considered for weight loss surgery because “conservative” diet and exercise interventions don’t work for the severely obese, doctors were also told.

Surgery should be an option for obese kids, doctors say.

Brisbane-based surgeon Dr George Hopkins said desperate parents are screaming out for the surgical intervention yet the Australian hospital system is “unequipped” to meet their needs.

Also speaking at the meeting in Brisbane, he implored his colleagues to start a conversation on the ‘controversial’ issue.

“It’s been discussed intermittently in small groups but we need more than that for hospitals to start saying ‘lets set this up’,” he said.

“Logistically our health system as it stands can’t deal with this.”

One in four Australian children aged 2-17 are now either overweight or obese.

Dr Hopkins has been performing effective sleeve gastrectomies on adolescents for years and said his patients just keep getting younger.

One was an 11-year-old boy who weighed about 135 kilograms and refused to go to school because the playground became too difficult for him psychologically.

“It was not worth it, he could learn nothing in the environment that had been created,” Dr Hopkins told the meeting.
 “It was literally gut-wrenching.”

“The need out there is just screaming, it’s just a question of getting everybody on board,” he told AAP.

“These parents are often desperate. If someone is dragging their kid along to see me because they care, they’re prepared to go through all the steps to do it. It’s not child abuse, it’s anything but.”

At the end of the day, however, there must be a consensus on how young is too young because there are risks involved with any surgical procedure, he acknowledged.

Dr Hopkins admitted it seems logical that a surgeon advocate for surgical intervention but “conservative management does not work” and to insist that it does is almost “perverse” because obesity can be the result of a genetic predisposition.

“Obviously prevention is always better than the cure but we don’t stand outside cancer clinics saying ‘if we just could have prevented it,” he said.

-AAP