Warnings on child obesity

Tuesday October 11th, 2016

Britain is among a number of countries facing a huge toll of future ill health resulting from growing rates of childhood obesity, according to a series of studies published today.

Today is World Obesity Day and campaigners sought to focus attention on the number of overweight children.

According to Cancer Research UK, more than 1.6 million children have started secondary school while overweight or obese in England in the last decade.

Meanwhile the Obesity Health Alliance warned that 60% of the poorest boys in England will be overweight or obese by 2020.

And an international study, reported in Pediatric Obesity, found that 268 million children over the age of five will be overweight within a decade. This will include 91 million obese children, researchers said.

Professor Russell Viner, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: “Obesity blights a childhood and damages adult life, raising the risk of serious complications such as type two diabetes and breathing problems – conditions we are seeing much earlier in childhood. These and other conditions associated with obesity cost the health system around £6bn a year – this is simply not sustainable.

“We need to make healthier food the easier, cheaper choice by introducing advertising restrictions before the 9pm watershed, and testing the impact taxation has on foods high in salt, sugar and fat.

T. Lobstein and R. Jackson-Leach. Planning for the worst: estimates of obesity and comorbidities in school-age children in 2025. Pediatric Obesity 10 October 2016; doi: 10.1111/ijpo.12185 [abstract]

Tags: Child Health | Diet & Food | Fitness | UK News | World Health

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