Overweight kids: tackling childhood obesity is about more than just diet and exercise
David Morley, Sheffield Hallam University A recent World Health Organisation repor t revealed that the number of obese children and adolescents – aged five to 19 years – worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. Worryingly, it also predicts that “obese” is likely to become the new norm. The report stated that: If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022. The number of overweight or obese infants and young children increased from 32m globally in 1990 to 41m in 2016 . The vast majority of overweight or obese children live in developing countries, where the rate of increase has been more than 30% higher than that of developed countries. And in the UK, recent research shows that 9% of four and five year-olds are now classed as obese – with the proportion rising to 20% for 10 to 11-year-olds. Efforts to reverse this growing trend have mainly focused on two aspects of a child’s life: d...