Britains Youth Increasingly Obese
Is enough being done to halt the growth of Childhood Obesity in UK?
Reports of a grossly overweight child again focuses attention on childhood obesity and what steps are in place to encourage healthy eating amongst Britain's young people
An 8 year old British boy, who has already lost over a stone and a half in weight, currently weighs over 14 stone (89kg) and has faced the possibility of being taken into care. Before Christmas the boy weighed 15 stone and eight pounds which is 4 times the weight of an average child of his age. This report comes on the back of many other reports expressing concern at the upward trend in childhood obesity amongst children and young people in Britain.
The level of obesity in children has risen steadily over the last 10 years, and information from the European Association for the Study of Obesity indicates that the UK has one of the highest prevalence rates of overweight children in Europe. The BBC has reported in an article on it's website, that if the trend continues then by 2020, half of Britain's children could be overweight.
But what is being done to halt this trend?
The UK government has set a target to halt the increase in childhood obesity by 2010, and whilst this is to be achieved through education of children and their parents, better labeling of foods and through high profile campaigns. However having set the target, there appear to be concerns about how achievable this is, given that little in the way of concrete activity has taken place yet. The Public Accounts Committee has called for the appointment of a high-profile leader to co-ordinate the activity through the relevant government departments.
A number if initiatives have been announced, either through voluntary agreement or through legislation with an aim to halt the growth of childhood obesity. One key focus, of course, has been schools. Schools will take a major part in turning around this trend, both by educating children (and also in some cases parents), as to the benefits of healthy eating; and ensuring that menus are adjusted to provide healthy, well balanced meals.
Until the start of this academic year, many schools were allowed to set their own policies for food served to students through the canteens and supplementary outlets in the schools such as vending machines. To schools that manage their own budgets, the revenue received from sponsored vending machines within the schools was a useful – and sometimes vital - addition to the bottom line. As many schools manage their own kitchens, or have appointed contractors to run the kitchens, the emphasis also has been on ‘market forces’ rather than ‘healthy eating’. If students have been buying chips (fries) at the expense of salads, then the menus have been altered accordingly, perhaps with little regard to the nutritional benefits or otherwise of the food being offered. With the absence of a whole school policy towards school food, however, this has meant that children have not been educated as to the benefits of a healthy eating option and therefore are not requesting an alternative – thus the cycle continues.
Things are changing. A high profile campaign by British chef, Jamie Oliver, started to raise public awareness of the need for change and bought the subject of healthy eating in schools high on the political agenda. The government set up the School Food Trust to help promote healthy eating within schools, with the remit to "transform school food and food skills, promote the education and health of children and young people and improve the quality of food in schools."
The spending on food for school dinners has increased to a minimum of 60p a head for secondary school children (age 11 – 18). From the start of the 2007/2008 school year in September, schools will new rules about what schools can sell from vending machines, already deep fried food is being restricted to two portions a week and fresh fruit and vegetables must be available daily.
However without society-wide education, will this be enough? There have been widespread reports about a decline in the numbers of school dinners taken since the new ‘healthy eating’ initiatives have been introduced. There were even reports of parents ‘smuggling’ burgers and chips into the school grounds, suggesting that not all parents were supportive of the new initiatives.
For further reading providing help and advise on Childhood Obesity take a look at the Suite101 articles here and here.
As a postscript to this article, in a survey carried out in a large secondary school, over the course of a week 7000 bags of crisps were sold, which equated to 1 bag per student per day, and 10 pieces of fresh fruit. This is not a misprint - as the person who carried out this piece of analysis, the author of this article was shocked to realize that she was personally accountable for 10% of the schools fruit consumption in the week of the survey!
