The obesity epidemic sweeping Australia may be even worse than first thought, with the latest study showing as many as 3.3 million adults are obese.
Researchers from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare have drawn on all data from the past 20 years and concluded Australia is "at the point where the USA was in 1995".
A further 5.6 million Australian adults are overweight, they estimate.
Disturbingly, data that relied on people reporting their own weight and height probably underestimated the extent of the problem, said report co-author Anne-Marie Waters.
"We know that people tend to overestimate their height, and underestimate their weight," Ms Waters said.
So while self-reported data showed at least 16 per cent of men and 17 per cent of women - or 2.4 million adults - were obese, the figure was likely to be much higher, researchers said.
The institute's medical adviser, Dr Paul Magnus, said Australians should be most concerned about the speed at which the obesity rate was rising. During the 1990s, the prevalence of obesity rose by 71 per cent among men and 80 per cent among women.
Joseph Proietto, an obesity expert from the Royal Melbourne Hospital, estimated about 20 per cent of Australians were obese and up to half were either obese or overweight.
The two main reasons, Professor Proietto said, were lack of exercise and our virtually unlimited access to high- energy, high-protein foods.
Experts have calculated the level of "incidental exercise" - physical activity that is part of daily life - that people did 150 years ago was the equivalent of a 15-kilometre walk more than we do today.
"For hundreds of millions of years, our bodies were optimised to conserve energy," Professor Proietto said. "Then our intellects created the industrial revolution and allowed us to live these incredibly sedentary lifestyles."
The solution may require not just education, but changing the urban environment to encourage exercise, he said.
"People have tried education in the past and found it did not work on its own," he said. "What people are now saying is, we need to go beyond that and collaborate with councils, schools, communities to encourage exercise.
"In a dictatorship, you could say, 'You can't use your car three days a week,' but you can't do that in a democracy . . . you have to find other ways."
Public health experts have suggested designing suburbs to encourage walking rather than driving, building more parks, having fewer lifts and escalators in favour of stairs and encouraging use of public transport, which is associated with greater physical activity.
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