Better nutrition and exercise needed to fight child obesity

Thenumber of obese children and adolescents worldwide has jumped tenfoldin the past 40 years and the rise is accelerating in low- andmiddle-income countries, especially in Asia, a major study said lastweek, reigniting concern about the issue. Childhood and teen obesityrates have levelled off in the US, north-western Europe and other richcountries, but remain “unacceptably high” there, researchers at ImperialCollege London and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.“Over40 years we have gone from about 11mn to a more than tenfold increase toover 120mn obese children and adolescents throughout the world,”according to lead author Majid Ezzati of Imperial’s School of PublicHealth. This means that nearly 8% of boys and nearly 6% of girlsworldwide were obese in 2016, against less than 1% for both sexes in1975.An additional 213mn children aged 5-19 were overweight lastyear, but fell below the threshold for obesity, according to the largestever study, based on height and weight measurements of 129mn people.Ironically, globally, more children are still underweight rather thanobese although the researchers think that will change by 2022 if trendscontinue. They called for better nutrition at home and at school, andmore physical exercise to prevent a generation from becoming adults atgreater risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancers due to excessiveweight. Clear food labels on salt, sugar and fat content are needed tohelp consumers make “healthy choices”, the study said.South Africa,Egypt and Mexico which had “very low levels of obesity four decades ago”now have among the high rates of obesity in girls, between 20-25%,according to Ezzati. “The experience of east Asia and Latin America andthe Caribbean show that the transition from underweight to overweightand obesity can be rapid,” the study said. If current trends continue,in 2022 there will be more obese children and teenagers worldwide thanunderweight ones, who now number 192mn, half of them in India, the studysaid. Polynesia and Micronesia had the highest rates of child obesitylast year, 25.4% in girls and 22.4% in boys, followed by “thehigh-income English-speaking region” that includes the US, Canada,Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Britain. Among high-incomecountries, the US had “the highest obesity rates for girls and boys”,19.5% and 23.3%, respectively.“Children are not getting physicalactivity in the school days, there is poor food opportunities in manyschools, walking and cycling to school is going down in many countries,unsafe in many other countries, and parents are not being given theright, sufficient advice on nutrition,” said Fiona Bull of WHO’sdepartment of non-communicable diseases. “It’s the changingenvironments, food, behaviours, portions, consumption patterns havecompletely changed over the last 40 years. Highly processed food is moreavailable, more marketed and it’s cheaper,” she said.A separatestudy, also released to mark World Obesity Day on Wednesday, shows thatgetting those figures down is not just an issue of public health, butalso public finance. The research by the World Obesity Federation (WOF)found that treating the effects of obesity will cost the world’scollective healthcare systems $1.2tn per year by 2025, and the increasein healthcare costs to the US is on track to outpace all other nations.Taxation and tough restrictions on marketing of junk food should beconsidered, it said. WHO has already recommended a 20% tax on sugarydrinks to reduce consumption.