It's a disaster of increasing proportions. We are almost as fat as Americans. We are getting fatter faster than any other developed country in the past 20 years. What's more, if we keep stuffing ourselves, 75 per cent of Australians will be overweight in 10 years' time. Fast and feast Samaras is an advocate of the old ways of fasting and feasting. For her, what you eat matters less than how you eat. Eat light and you'll live longer. ''People who follow the old faiths and follow the intermittent fasts live a lot longer,'' she says. ''We know from studies that the Greeks living in Australia in the '60s and '70s, lived the longest. ''You might say it's the Mediterranean diet, the extra virgin olive oil and a bit of hard labour helps as well. But these people were following the orthodox calendar and fasted for 200 days a year. That's light eating: bread and cheese, bread and olives, a bit of fruit and vegetables.''

Samaras points to the change in our eating patterns from ancient times when feasting was rare and fasting was the norm. ''We've gone from having two or three feasts a year to potentially having them every week or more,'' she says. ''And, often when we eat out, there is the expectation of having bacchanalian quantities of wine and three courses.'' Southern Cross University's Professor Garry Egger says our physiology isn't designed for our modern environment. ''Humans have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years through fasting and feasting,'' he says. ''Only in the past 20 years we have had consistent food and not gone through cycles of fasting and feasting [in developed countries].'' The right to gorge

Australians find the notion that they should reduce their food intake hard to swallow. Surely, we've earned the right to eat as a symbol of our successful struggle out of poverty and hunger? ''There are concerns about not having a horn of plenty on our table,'' Samaras says. ''There is a sense that we are doing well when the table is laden, perhaps overburdened, with all sorts of goodies.'' Our figures say we've done too well. We've been too successful at reducing the cost of calories and paid the price of expanding waistlines. The right to eat doesn't mean the right to gorge. ''We need to cut back on food,'' Egger says. ''The argument about whether it is carbohydrate or fat or protein is irrelevant. It's the total intake that is relevant. ''The only countries where there has been a drop in obesity are countries in crisis: Nauru when it went broke, Cuba when the Russians left, during the war in the Balkans.''

Fat like us Perhaps we'd be more inclined to act if we didn't find it hard to recognise overweight people any more. ''All our radars are skewed,'' Samaras says. ''We don't register people are overweight. Until I put that 16-year-old girl on the scales, even I didn't realise how overweight she was.'' Egger agrees. ''Fat is the new slim,'' he says. ''Putting on weight is becoming the norm. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study suggesting obesity spreads like a virus. Friends tend to have the same body weight. The implication is that if you've got a friend who is fat, it's OK to be fat and it multiplies. ''Even parents have lost sight of their kids' bodies. I suspect parents don't see their kids as fat because they compare them to other kids.'' Samaras adds: ''Is our economy so dependent on stuffing younger and younger people that we can't stop making people eat more and more?''

Egger, co-author of Planet Obesity, is in no doubt the answer is yes. ''The growth system of economics is totally dependent on making people fat,'' he says. ''We make money out of selling products and out of feeding people.'' Appetite V Hunger Garry Egger suggests we learn to become friends with hunger and understand that it's different to appetite. ''There is hunger and there is appetite,'' he says. ''Appetite is the learned desire to want to eat. Hunger is the biological drive to have to eat. ''Most modern people have big appetites but their hunger levels aren't any different to a thousand years ago.'' Another good tip is keeping a famine pantry. ''Only having food in the pantry that is fresh or you have to cook to eat,'' Samaras says.