Legislate for smaller portion sizes to fight obesity, says doctor

A diabetes specialist has called for the government to introduce new laws to force restaurants and junk food companies to serve up smaller portion sizes.

Dr Sultan Linjawi said methods of tackling obesity often looked to individuals to fix the problem and ignored the role of society.

Diabetes specialist Sultan Linjawi said the government should legislate portion control.Credit: dolgachov

"If we can find ways to legislate and reduce the amount that people are served, that 20 or 30 per cent reduction in the food that they eat may have an enormous impact," he said.

Dr Linjawi said if laws could be introduced to mandate smaller portions, then it would be up to individuals to decide if they wanted to eat two portions.

"Nothing is stopping them ordering two Macca's but at the end of the day, I think it's reasonable that we look at ways of reducing the amount that's actually served to them," he said.

Dr Linjawi said Japan had a 3 per cent obesity rate and fast food restaurants that served food such as fried chicken offered up portion sizes 30 per cent smaller than in Australia.

In Queensland, one in four children and two in three adults are overweight or obese.

Dr Linjawi said the UK introduced a sugar tax, which prompted food manufacturers to make their chocolate bars smaller.

"I think that was a sort of a reverse way of doing it [portion control]," he said.

"Mine would be, I think, to say, a chocolate bar is this size."

Dr Linjawi was speaking at a parliamentary committee hearing looking into the establishment of a new Health and Wellbeing Queensland body, which would aim to improve people's health and reduce the risk factors of chronic disease.

It is estimated that obesity-related illness cost the Queensland healthcare system $756 million in 2015.

When the extra costs of absenteeism from employment, losses to productivity, loss of wellbeing and early death were included, the total impact on the Queensland economy was estimated to be $11.2 billion.

Dr Linjawi said there was an opportunity to not only look at funding models for improving people's health but also legislation to change the way companies behave with consumers.

He said junk food in Australian supermarkets became cheaper the more you bought, unlike healthy food.

Picking Maltesers as an example, Dr Linjawi said he bought a small packet for $3.50.

"I thought, that's a bit little ... for how I was feeling, so I thought, well, I'll look around," he said.

"The next pack I found were these, which were $6, and this is triple the weight.

"And these are five times the weight and were $5."

Dr Linjawi said Australia had an issue with non-linear pricing.

"You never see a situation in supermarkets whereby things that are healthy cost less the more you buy," he said.

"You never see you can get 30 per cent free if you buy green beans — we never see that — but every single aisle from the middle across the whole of the supermarket basically is offering us 30 per cent extra, get king size, buy this, buy that."