Call for pre-school obesity guide
By Nick Ralston
July 08, 2006
A STATE government advisory group working to fight obesity hopes healthy eating and exercise guidelines will start being introduced into New South Wales pre-schools by 2007.
Commissioned by NSW Health, the NSW Centre for Overweight has released The Weight of Opinion, a report on the perceptions of childcare workers on childhood obesity.
The paper showed workers were concerned about obesity levels and recommended a set of national guidelines to help day care centres work out appropriate levels of exercise for children.
It also says pre-schools should be sending a clear message about nutrition through lessons involving activities such as educational games.
Centre co-director Professor Ian Caterson said educating children about healthy living as early as possibly was important.
“It appears that there are some children in pre-school that have a weight problem,” Prof Caterson said.
“We know that we've got to get kids to have healthy food and activity habits and the earlier you do this the better.”
Prof Caterson said meetings between various bodies involved in health and pre-schools were planned to tackle the problem.
“The start of next year for some of these things are a possibility,” he said.
“Some will require more equipment for games and things like that and that doesn't happen overnight, but some broad guidelines based on the healthy food for kids should be readily easy to obtain.”
NSW Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said the educational focus should be on teaching parents what is appropriate for their children.
“I'm astonished that they have targeted pre-schools. Every time I drive past pre-schools I see children outside playing,” Ms Skinner said.
“I think you've really got to get the message out to parents and the Government should have been doing that much sooner than this.”
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