Is Australia facing an obesity crisis?

"Yummy bananas," she says, trying to convince two-year-old Anneka as she slices up the fruit. Anneka doesn't look too sure. Wendy, a pre-school teacher and mother of three, has struggled with her own weight for much of her life. She wants it to be different for her children, but things like fast food and advertising don't make it easy, BBC News reports. "My children and other children know the symbols for things like McDonalds and Coca Cola and Cadburys before they are two years old," she said. "The truth is junk food is cheap and easy. With fast-food restaurants you don't even have to get out of the car, let alone buy food and cook it. It has just become such a part of our culture." Around the world, Australia projects the image of a sporty, outdoorsy place full of fit people and open spaces. But experts say unprecedented affluence along with a culture of convenience, growing portion sizes and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle have made one in two Australians overweight and turned the country into one of the fattest in the world. While studies show that obesity rates in other developed countries like the US have begun to level off, Australia's are still on the rise. Late last year, it climbed to fourth in the OECD's ranking of advanced nations with the largest proportion of obese citizens (28.3%), behind the US, Mexico and New Zealand. And a study by the State of Victoria Department of Human Services predicted in 2008 that without effective intervention, 83% of men and 75% of women would be overweight or obese by 2025. Professor Mike Daube, director of the Public Health Advocacy Institute, says other countries have moved more quickly to tackle obesity. "We have an affluent, car-oriented, screen-dominated society where we eat as much as we like, we eat junk because it tastes good and it's quite cheap," he said. "There is an immensely powerful food industry and the government hasn't even started to take action."