Parents Unable to Recognise Obesity Warning Signs

The Medical Research Council have claimed that many parents do not realise their children are overweight. Perhaps this is not surprising when you consider that their research also shows that overweight adults do not recognise the fact that they have a weight problem.

The issue of child obesity has become a major talking point over the last year and despite various government initiatives little impact seems to have been made on this growing problem. The government has now set a target of halting the rise in the number of obese children under the age of eleven by 2010. In order to achieve this target the Department of Health has pledged to do more in the next year to support healthy eating and increased activity levels.

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint launched the Government's Healthy Living Programme by saying there would be a series of initiatives to support families, such as 'Top Tips for Top Mums' to help families share ideas for getting children to eat fruit and vegetables. It will be interesting to see exactly what is included in the programme. Up until now the rising obesity rates prove that getting children interested in healthy food and taking more exercise is a very tall order. Hopefully the programme will deal with families as a whole rather than targeting just the children. Initiatives have a much better chance of bearing fruit if the whole family is involved.

This is a very difficult issue to tackle. The MRC have found that over the last twenty years time spent preparing the main meal of the day has fallen from two hours to twenty minutes. This means that less fresh food is being used as the reliance on ready meals and processed foods has increased.

It is believed that many people see eating healthily and taking regular exercise as hard going. In order to keep the peace at mealtimes parents prefer to feed children what they ask for rather than food of high nutritional value. The MRC study found that more than 40% of children over the age of six choose their evening meal on half of all occasions but they lack the skills to choose wisely.

Another contributory factor to the problem is that increasingly safety conscious parents do not allow their children to walk or cycle to school or to play outside. This reduces the opportunities children have to be active in a normal, unstructured way.

Dr Jebb said 80% of parents recognised that an unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity contributed to obesity.

"But people don't necessarily realise that it applies to their child," she said.

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